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Unconscious Comedians

by Honore de Balzac

Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley

March, 1998  [Etext #1242]


The Project Gutenberg Etext of Unconscious Comedians, by Balzac
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and Dagny, dagnyj@hotmail.com


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Etext prepared by John Bickers, jbickers@templar.actrix.gen.nz
and Dagny, dagnyj@hotmail.com





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 the
noblest families of the Roussillon (Spanish originally) which,
although distinguished for the antiquity of its race, has been doomed
for 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 had
in some degree forgotten the miseries and privations of his childhood
and his family amid the other privations and miseries which are never
lacking to "rapins," whose whole fortune consists of intrepid
vocation. Later, the cares of fame and those of success were other
causes of forgetfulness.

If you have followed the capricious and meandering course of these
studies, perhaps you will remember Mistigris, Schinner's pupil, one of
the heroes of "A Start in Life" (Scenes from Private Life), and his
brief apparitions in other Scenes. In 1845, this landscape painter,
emulator of the Hobbemas, Ruysdaels, and Lorraines, resembles no more
the shabby, frisky rapin whom we then knew. Now an illustrious man, he
owns a charming house in the rue de Berlin, not far from the hotel de
Brambourg, where his friend Brideau lives, and quite close to the
house of Schinner, his early master. He is a member of the Institute
and an officer of the Legion of honor; he is thirty-six years old, has
an income of twenty thousand francs from the Funds, his pictures sell
for their weight in gold, and (what seems to him more extraordinary
than the invitations he receives occasionally to court balls) his name
and fame, mentioned so often for the last sixteen years by the press
of Europe, has at last penetrated to the valley of the Eastern
Pyrenees, where vegetate three veritable Loras: his father, his eldest
brother, 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 in
the department. This cousin was the first to bethink himself of Leon.
But it was not until 1840 that Leon de Lora received a letter from
Monsieur Sylvestre Palafox-Castal-Gazonal (called simply Gazonal) to
which he replied that he was assuredly himself,--that is to say, the
son of the late Leonie Gazonal, wife of Comte Fernand Didas y Lora.

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

Now the said Gazonal was intending to go to Paris to prosecute a
lawsuit which the prefect of the Eastern Pyrenees had arbitrarily
removed from the usual jurisdiction, transferring it to that of the
Council of State. The worthy provincial determined to investigate this
act, and to ask his Parisian cousin the reason of such high-handed
measures. It thus happened that Monsieur Gazonal came to Paris, took
shabby lodgings in the rue Croix-des-Petits-Champs, and was amazed to
see the palace of his cousin in the rue de Berlin. Being told that the
painter was then travelling in Italy, he renounced, for the time
being, the intention of asking his advice, and doubted if he should
ever find his maternal relationship acknowledged by so great a man.

During the years 1843 and 1844 Gazonal attended to his lawsuit. This
suit concerned a question as to the current and level of a stream of
water and the necessity of removing a dam, in which dispute the
administration, instigated by the abutters on the river banks, had
meddled. The removal of the dam threatened the existence of Gazonal's
manufactory. In 1845, Gazonal considered his cause as wholly lost; the
secretary of the Master of Petitions, charged with the duty of drawing
up the report, had confided to him that the said report would
assuredly be against him, and his own lawyer confirmed the statement.
Gazonal, though commander of the National Guard in his own town and
one of the most capable manufacturers of the department, found himself
of so little account in Paris, and he was, moreover, so frightened by
the 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 called
a manufactory of rheumatism. As he added up the costs of his suit and
his living, he vowed within himself to poison the prefect on his
return, or to minotaurize him. In his moments of deepest sadness he
killed the prefect outright; in gayer mood he contented himself with
minotaurizing him.

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

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

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

"Between eleven and half-past," he said when he related his adventures
to his cronies in the provinces, "two Parisians dressed in simple
frock-coats, looking like NOTHING AT ALL, called out when they saw me
on 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 little
Leon, taking me in his arms," related Gazonal on his return home. "The
breakfast was splendid. I thought I was going blind when I saw the
number of bits of gold it took to pay that bill. Those fellows must
earn their weight in gold, for I saw my cousin give the waiter THIRTY
SOUS--the price of a whole day's work!"

During this monstrous breakfast--advisedly so called in view of six
dozen Osten oysters, six cutlets a la Soubise, a chicken a la Marengo,
lobster mayonnaise, green peas, a mushroom pasty, washed down with
three bottles of Bordeaux, three bottles of Champagne, plus coffee and
liqueurs, to say nothing of relishes--Gazonal was magnificent in his
diatribes against Paris. The worthy manufacturer complained of the
length of the four-pound bread-loaves, the height of the houses, the
indifference of the passengers in the streets to one another, the
cold, the rain, the cost of hackney-coaches, all of which and much
else he bemoaned in so witty a manner that the two artists took a
mighty fancy to cousin Gazonal, and made him relate his lawsuit from
beginning to end.

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

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 of
something or other at the Sorbonne,--a fellow who writes things in
reviews, and for whom I have the profoundest contempt."

"Claude Vignon," said Bixiou.

"Yes, that's his name," replied Gazonal. "Massol and Vignon--there you
have 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 be
done, 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 to
the other of that sheet of asphalt on which, between the hours of one
and three, it is difficult to avoid seeing some of the personages in
honor 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 Pont
Neuf; in these days this privilege had been acquired by the Boulevard
des Italiens.

"Paris," said the painter to his cousin, "is an instrument on which we
must know how to play; if we stand here ten minutes I'll give you your
first lesson. There, look!" he said, raising his cane and pointing to
a 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 a
show-case, a very pretentious gown and a faded tartan shawl, whose
face had been buried twenty years of her life in a damp lodge, and
whose swollen hand-bag betokened no better social position than that
of an ex-portress. With her was a slim little girl, whose eyes,
fringed with black lashes, had lost their innocence and showed great
weariness; her face, of a pretty shape, was fresh and her hair
abundant, her forehead charming but audacious, her bust thin,--in
other 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 Mademoiselle
Ninette, "may perhaps win your suit for you."

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

"That rat, who is just leaving a rehearsal at the Opera-house, is
going home to eat a miserable dinner, and will return about three
o'clock to dress, if she dances in the ballet this evening--as she
will, to-day being Monday. This rat is already an old rat for she is
thirteen years of age. Two years from now that creature may be worth
sixty thousand francs; she will be all or nothing, a great danseuse or
a marcheuse, a celebrated person or a vulgar courtesan. She has worked
hard since she was eight years old. Such as you see her, she is worn
out with fatigue; she exhausted her body this morning in the dancing-
class, she is just leaving a rehearsal where the evolutions are as
complicated as a Chinese puzzle; and she'll go through them again to-
night. The rat is one of the primary elements of the Opera; she is to
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 lowest
depths of poverty could force a child to subject her feet and joints
to positive torture, to keep herself virtuous out of mere speculation
until she is eighteen years of age, and to live with some horrible old
crone like a beautiful plant in a dressing of manure. You shall see
now a procession defiling before you, one after the other, of men of
talent, little and great, artists in seed or flower, who are raising
to the glory of France that every-day monument called the Opera, an
assemblage of forces, wills, and forms of genius, nowhere collected as
in Paris.

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

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

"Guillaume Tell."

"Well," said Leon, "Matilde's grand DUO must have delighted you. What
do 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. Another
thing! You have seen the ballet, and you'll now see it defiling past
you in its every-day clothes, without knowing that the face of your
lawsuit 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-five
years of age have lived sixty, and whose beauty is so real and so sure
of being cultivated that they make no display of it. She was tall, and
walked well, with the arrogant look of a dandy; her toilet was
remarkable for its ruinous simplicity.

"That is Carabine," said Bixiou, who gave her, as did Leon, a slight
nod 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 or
fictitious, has sold as soon as it was clear she would become neither
first, second, nor third danseuse, but who prefers the occupation of
coryphee to any other, for the main reason that having spent her youth
in that employment she is unfitted for any other. She has been
rejected at the minor theatres where they want danseuses; she has not
succeeded in the three towns where ballets are given; she has not had
the money, or perhaps the desire to go to foreign countries--for
perhaps you don't know that the great school of dancing in Paris
supplies the whole world with male and female dancers. Thus a rat who
becomes a marcheuse,--that is to say, an ordinary figurante in a
ballet,--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 three
times this evening,--as a princess, a peasant-girl, a Tyrolese; by
which 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 a
chamber-maid, a cook, and a man-servant. She occupies a fine apartment
in the rue Saint-Georges; in short, she is, in proportion to French
fortunes of the present day compared with those of former times, a
relic of the eighteenth century 'opera-girl.' Carabine is a power; at
this moment she governs du Tillet, a banker who is very influential in
the 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 which was
turning at that moment from the boulevard into the rue Grange-
Bateliere, "there's one of the leading danseuses whose name on the
posters attracts all Paris. That woman earns sixty thousand francs a
year and lives like a princess; the price of your manufactory all told
wouldn't suffice to buy you the privilege of bidding her good-morning
a dozen times."

"Do you see," said Bixiou, "that young man who is sitting on the front
seat 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 business
with the newspapers; carries messages of peace or war in the morning
to the director of the Opera; and takes charge of the applause which
salutes her as she enters or leaves the stage."

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

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

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

"There," said Bixiou, "is a baritone and a second danseuse. The
baritone is a man of immense talent, but a baritone voice being only
an accessory to the other parts he scarcely earns what the second
danseuse earns. The danseuse, who was celebrated before Taglioni and
Ellsler appeared, has preserved to our day some of the old traditions
of the character dance and pantomime. If the two others had not
revealed in the art of dancing a poetry hitherto unperceived, she
would have been the leading talent; as it is, she is reduced to the
second line. But for all that, she fingers her thirty thousand francs
a year, and her faithful friend is a peer of France, very influential
in the Chamber. And see! there's a danseuse of the third order, who,
as a dancer, exists only through the omnipotence of a newspaper. If
her engagement were not renewed the ministry would have one more
journalistic enemy on its back. The corps de ballet is a great power;
consequently it is considered better form in the upper ranks of
dandyism and politics to have relations with dance than with song. In
the 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 at
this moment.

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

"I am amazed," said Gazonal, "at the hundreds of thousands of francs
walking 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 how
it is played,--in short, how people amuse themselves in Paris."

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

"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 ours
who has ended a miscellaneous career by becoming the editor of a
newspaper, and whose character and finances are governed by movements
comparable to those of the tides. Gaillard can contribute to make you
win 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 rue
de Menars, the valet ushered the three friends into a boudoir and
asked 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 charming
morning toilet.

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

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

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

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

Theodore Gaillard, formerly a wit, had ended by becoming a stupid man
in consequence of remaining constantly in one centre,--a moral
phenomenon frequently to be observed in Paris. His principal method of
conversation consisted in sowing his speeches with sayings taken from
plays 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 the
eleventh time you've caught him at night and missed him in the
morning."

"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 safety
lock I call him." Seeing a smile on Gaillard's face he added: "That's
a saying in our business. Pinch a man, means arrest him, lock him up.
The criminal police have another term. Vidoeq said to his man, 'You
are 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 a
threatening but cool tone.

"'A question that of fifty centimes'" (Les Saltimbauques), replied the
editor, 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 information
without knowing they do so, and without getting paid for it. I put
fools and ninnies below rapscallions."

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

"Do you belong to the police?" asked Gazonal, eying with uneasy
curiosity the hard, impassible little man, who was dressed like the
third 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 was
Vidoeq; secret police, which keeps an eye on the other police, the
head of it being always unknown; political police,--that's Fouche's.
Then there's the police of Foreign Affairs, and finally, the palace
police (of the Emperor, Louis XVIII., etc.), always squabbling with
that 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 many
heads he must have brought to the scaffold!"

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

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

"The more rascally a business is, the more honor it needs. I'm for him
who pays me best," continued Fromenteau addressing Gaillard. "You want
to recover fifty thousand francs and you talk farthings to your means
of 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 face
moving. "I call her Lizette because of Beranger."

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

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

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

"If I were to enumerate the qualities which make a man remarkable in
our vocation," said Fromenteau, whose rapid glance had enabled him to
fathom Gazonal completely, "you'd think I was talking of a man of
genius. First, we must have the eyes of a lynx; next, audacity (to
tear 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--for
spying must be guided by the characters and habits of the persons
spied upon; it is a gift of heaven); and, finally, agility, vigor. All
these facilities and qualities, monsieur, are depicted on the door of
the Gymnase-Amoros as Virtue. Well, we must have them all, under pain
of losing the salaries given us by the State, the rue de Jerusalem, or
the minister of Commerce."

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

Fromenteau looked at the provincial without replying, without
betraying the smallest sign of feeling, and departed, bowing to no
one,--a trait of real genius.

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

"It has something the effect of a dinner-pill," said the worthy
provincial, while Gaillard and Bixiou were talking together in a low
voice.

"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 the
morning, the time to be polite. Now," continued Leon, speaking to
Bixiou, "if we are going to the Chamber to help him with his lawsuit
let us take the longest way round."

"Words said by great men are like silver-gilt spoons with the gilt
washed off; by dint of repetition they lose their brilliancy," said
Bixiou. "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 an
amusing day of it."

"Gazonal," said Leon, "I shall make the man pose for you; but mind
that you keep a serious face, like the king on a five-franc piece, for
you are going to see a choice original, a man whose importance has
turned his head. In these days, my dear fellow, under our new
political dispensation, every human being tries to cover himself with
glory, and most of them cover themselves with ridicule; hence a lot of
living 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 wears
the cross, but I'm the better dressed of the two, and it is I whom
people are looking at."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Hein! what style!" said Leon to his cousin; then he added, addressing
the 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, a
powerful voice, a wealthy voice.

Vital deigned to show himself, dressed entirely in black cloth, with a
splendid frilled shirt adorned with one diamond. The three friends
observed a young and pretty woman sitting near the desk, working at
some embroidery.

Vital is a man between thirty and forty years of age, with a natural
joviality now repressed by ambitious ideas. He is blessed with that
medium height which is the privilege of sound organizations. He is
rather plump, and takes great pains with his person. His forehead is
getting bald, but he uses that circumstance to give himself the air of
a man consumed by thought. It is easy to see by the way his wife looks
at him and listens to him that she believes in the genius and glory of
her husband. Vital loves artists, not that he has any taste for art,
but from fellowship; for he feels himself an artist, and makes this
felt by disclaiming that title of nobility, and placing himself with
constant premeditation at so great a distance from the arts that
persons may be forced to say to him: "You have raised the construction
of 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! Two
months would hardly suffice to invent a shape in keeping with your
countenance. See, here is your lithographic portrait: I have studied
it 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 presenting
Gazonal. "He might be as great as Jacquart if he would only let
himself die. Our friend, a manufacturer of cloth, has discovered a
method of replacing the indigo in old blue coats, and he wants to see
you 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 your
work."

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 joyful
obsequiousness.

"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 style
of Monsieur Lousteau's," he continued, looking at Gazonal with the eye
of 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 the
value of the pains I bestow upon them. Now, take the aristocracy--
there is but one man there who has truly comprehended the Hat; and
that is the Prince de Bethune. How is it that men do not consider, as
women do, that the hat is the first thing that strikes the eye? And
why 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 know
the difficulties of a change, messieurs. I don't speak of my own
writings on the matter, which, as I think, approach it
philosophically, but simply as a hatter. I have myself studied means
to accentuate the infamous head-covering to which France is now
enslaved until I succeed in 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 the
wittiest and most satirical people on earth will consent to wear upon
their heads a bit of stove-pipe?--as one of our great writers has
called it. Here are some of the infections I have been able to give to
those atrocious lines," he added, pointing to a number of his
creations. "But, although I am able to conform them to the character
of each wearer--for, as you see, there are the hats of a doctor, a
grocer, a dandy, an artist, a fat man, a thin man, and so forth--the
style itself remains horrible. Seize, I beg of you, my whole
thought--"

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

"This," he continued, "is the old hat of Claude Vignon, a great
critic, in the days when he was a free man and a free-liver. He has
lately come round to the ministry; they've made him a professor, a
librarian; he writes now for the Debats only; they've appointed him
Master of Petitions with a salary of sixteen thousand francs; he earns
four thousand more out of his paper, and he is decorated. Well, now
see his new hat."

And Vital showed them a hat of a form and design which was truly
expressive 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 remain
open late at night,--later than the cafes and the wineshops? That fact
puzzles me very much," said Gazonal.

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

"Everything is queer in Paris," said Leon.

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

"What obstacle is there?" asked Gazonal.

"Cheapness, monsieur. In the first place, very handsome silk hats can
be built for fifteen francs, which kills our business; for in Paris no
one ever has fifteen francs in his pocket to spend on a hat. If a
beaver hat costs thirty, it is still the same thing-- When I say
beaver, I ought to state that there are not ten pounds of beaver skins
left in France. That article is worth three hundred and fifty francs a
pound, and it takes an ounce for a hat. Besides, a beaver hat isn't
really worth anything; the skin takes a wretched dye; gets rusty in
ten minutes under the sun, and heat puts it out of shape as well. What
we call 'beaver' in the trade is neither more nor less than hare'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 you
these trade secrets because you are men of honor. But whether a man
has hare's-skin or silk on his head, fifteen or thirty francs in
short, 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 vestural
France will be saved on the day that gray hats with round crowns can
be 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 of
Louis XIII. and Louis XIV. Our business, which would then enter the
domain of fancy, would increase tenfold. The markets of the world
should belong to France; Paris will forever give the tone to women's
fashions, and yet the hats which all Frenchmen wear to-day are made in
every country on earth! There are ten millions of foreign money to be
gained 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," said
Leon.

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

"The man is colossal," said Gazonal, as they left the shop; "but I
assure you that all your originals so far have a touch of the
Southerner 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 gowns
hanging in her window," said Bixiou.

And he showed Gazonal one of those untidy shops which made an ugly
stain in the midst of the dazzling show-windows of modern retail
commerce. This shop had a front painted in 1820, which some bankrupt
had doubtless left in a dilapidated condition. The color had
disappeared beneath a double coating of dirt, the result of usage, and
a thick layer of dust; the window-panes were filthy, the door-knob
turned of itself, as door-knobs do in all places where people go out
more quickly than they enter.

"What do you say of THAT? First cousin to Death, isn't she?" said Leon
in 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, intending
to compete in liveliness with the two artists.

"To you, monsieur, who come from the country, it will be only three
hundred francs," she replied. Then, remarking in his manner a sort of
eagerness peculiar to Southerners, she added, in a grieved tone, "It
formerly 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 show
of 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 come
round there for a moment, you may perhaps make some good bargains."

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

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

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

"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 a
tale."

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

"How much will monsieur give for the information," she asked, looking
at 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," cried
Bixiou catching her round the waist.

"In the first place, my dear gentlemen, I have never, since I've been
in the business, found man or woman to haggle over happiness.
Besides," she said, letting a cold smile flicker on her lips, and
enforcing it by an icy glance full of catlike distrust, "if it doesn't
concern your happiness, it concerns your fortune; and at the height
where I find you lodging no man haggles over a 'dot'-- Come," she
said, "out with it! What is it you want to know, my lambs?"

"About the Beunier family," replied Bixiou, very glad to find out
something in this indirect manner about persons in whom he was
interested.

"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-hooks
every three months, I can tell you! It is hard work for her to pay the
interest on what I've lent her. Do you want to marry there,
simpleton?" she added, addressing Gazonal; "then pay me forty francs
and I'll talk four hundred worth."

Gazonal produced a forty-franc gold-piece, and Madame Nourrisson gave
him startling details as to the secret penury of certain so-called
fashionable women. This dealer in cast-off clothes, getting lively as
she talked, pictured herself unconsciously while telling of others.
Without betraying a single name or any secret, she made the three men
shudder by proving to them how little so-called happiness existed in
Paris that did not rest on the vacillating foundation of borrowed
money. She possessed, laid away in her drawers, the secrets of
departed grandmothers, living children, deceased husbands, dead
granddaughters,--memories set in gold and diamonds. She learned
appalling stories by making her clients talk of one another; tearing
their secrets from them in moments of passion, of quarrels, of anger,
and during those cooler negotiations which need a loan to settle
difficulties.

"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 noble
motives. Madame Nourrisson posed as having lost several opportunities
for marriage, also three daughters who had gone to the bad, and all
her illusions. She showed the pawn-tickets of the Mont-de-Piete to
prove the risks her business ran; declared that she did not know how
to meet the "end of the month"; she was robbed, she said,--ROBBED.

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

"Look here, my sons, I'll show you how we are DONE. It is not about
myself, but about my opposite neighbour, Madame Mahuchet, a ladies'
shoemaker. I had loaned money to a countess, a woman who has too many
passions for her means,--lives in a fine apartment filled with
splendid furniture, and makes, as we say, a devil of a show with her
high and mighty airs. She owed three hundred francs to her shoemaker,
and was giving a dinner no later than yesterday. The shoemaker, who
heard of the dinner from the cook, came to see me; we got excited, and
she wanted to make a row; but I said: 'My dear Madame Mahuchet, what
good will that do? you'll only get yourself hated. It is much better
to 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 is
not at home.'--'Up to that! we'll wait,' said Madame Mahuchet, 'if we
have to stay all night,'--and down we camped in the antechamber.
Presently the doors began to open and shut, and feet and voices came
along. I felt badly. The guests were arriving for dinner. You can see
the appearance it had. The countess sent her maid to coax Madame
Mahuchet: 'Pay you to-morrow!' in short, all the snares! Nothing took.
The countess, dressed to the nines, went to the dining-room. Mahuchet
heard her and opened the door. Gracious! when she saw that table
sparkling with silver, the covers to the dishes and the chandeliers
all glittering like a jewel-case, didn't she go off like soda-water
and fire her shot: 'When people spend the money of others they should
be sober and not give dinner-parties. Think of your being a countess
and owing three hundred francs to a poor shoemaker with seven
children!' You can guess how she railed, for the Mahuchet hasn't any
education. When the countess tried to make an excuse ('no money')
Mahuchet screamed out: 'Look at all your fine silver, madame; pawn it
and pay me!'--'Take some yourself,' said the countess quickly,
gathering up a quantity of forks and spoons and putting them into her
hands. 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 that
countess' poverty--it was plated ware!"

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

"Ah! my dear monsieur," said Madame Nourrisson, enlightened by the
slang, "you are an artist, you write plays, you live in the rue du
Helder and are friends with Madame Anatolia; you have habits that I
know 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 who
invented them."

"I assure you, my good Madame Nourrisson," said Bixiou, "that we only
wanted the pleasure of making your acquaintance, and we should like
very much to be informed as to how you ever came to slip into this
business."

"I was confidential maid in the family of a marshal of France, Prince
d'Ysembourg," she said, assuming the airs of a Dorine. "One morning,
one of the most beplumed countesses of the Imperial court came to the
house and wanted to speak to the marshal privately. I put myself in
the way of hearing what she said. She burst into tears and confided to
that 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 without
means, and if she didn't get a thousand francs, or two thousand, that
day 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 two
notes 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't
see me. She was laughing with a satisfaction that certainly wasn't
motherly, so I slipped after her to the peristyle where I heard her
say to the coachman, 'To Leroy's.' I ran round quickly to Leroy's, and
there, sure enough, was the poor mother. I got there in time to see
her order and pay for a fifteen-hundred-franc dress; you understand
that in those days people were made to pay when they bought. The next
day but one she appeared at an ambassador's ball, dressed to please
all 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 great
ladies on their finery; for passion never calculates, it pays
blindly.' If you want subjects for a vaudeville I can sell you
plenty."

She departed after delivering this tirade, in which all the phases of
her past life were outlined, leaving Gazonal as much horrified by her
revelations as by the five yellow teeth she showed when she tried to
smile.

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

"Make notes," replied Bixiou, whistling for his porter; "for I want
some money, and I'll show you the use of porters. You think they only
pull the gate-cord; whereas they really pull poor devils like me and
artists 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, but
more oily within and without, hair greasy, stomach puffy, skin dull
and moist, like that of the prior of a convent, always wearing list
shoes, a blue coat, and grayish trousers, made his appearance.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"There are seventy-one tenants in this house," said Bixiou, "and the
average of what they owe Ravenouillet is six thousand francs a month,
eighteen thousand quarterly for money advanced, postage, etc., not
counting the rents due. He is Providence--at thirty per cent, which we
all pay him, though he never asks for anything."

"Oh, Paris! Paris!" cried Gazonal.

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

"Who is it?" said Gazonal.

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

Passing in front of the porter's lodge, Gazonal saw Mademoiselle
Lucienne Ravenouillet holding in her hand a music score (she was a
pupil of the Conservatoire), her father reading a newspaper, and
Madame Ravenouillet with a package of letters to be carried up to the
lodgers.

"Thanks, Monsieur Bixiou!" said the girl.

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

"Here's the history of Ravenouillet," continued Bixiou, when the three
friends reached the boulevard. "In 1831 Massol, the councillor of
state who is dealing with your case, was a lawyer-journalist who at
that time never thought of being more than Keeper of the Seals, and
deigned to have King Louis-Philippe on his throne. Forgive his
ambition, he's from Carcassonne. One morning there entered to him a
young rustic of his parts, who said: 'You know me very well, Mossoo
Massol; I'm your neighbour the grocer's little boy; I've come from
down there, for they tell me a fellow is certain to get a place if he
comes to Paris.' Hearing these words, Massol shuddered, and said to
himself that if he were weak enough to help this compatriot (to him
utterly unknown) he should have the whole department prone upon him,
his bell-rope would break, his valet leave him, he should have
difficulties with his landlord about the stairway, and the other
lodgers would assuredly complain of the smell of garlic pervading the
house. Consequently, he looked at his visitor as a butcher looks at a
sheep whose throat he intends to cut. But whether the rustic
comprehended the stab of that glance or not, he went on to say (so
Massol told me), 'I've as much ambition as other men. I will never go
back 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 write
the newspapers can make, as they say, "fine weather and foul"; that
is, you have things all your own way, and it's enough to ask your help
to get any place, no matter what, under government. Now, though I have
faculties, like others, I know myself: I have no education; I don't
know how to write, and that's a misfortune, for I have ideas. I am not
seeking, therefore, to be your rival; I judge myself, and I know I
couldn't succeed there. But, as you are so powerful, and as we are
almost brothers, having played together in childhood, I count upon you
to launch me in a career and to protect me-- Oh, you MUST; I want a
place, a place suitable to my capacity, to such as I am, a place were
I can make my fortune.' Massol was just about to put his compatriot
neck and crop out of the door with some brutal speech, when the rustic
ended his appeal thus: 'I don't ask to enter the administration where
people advance like tortoises--there's your cousin, who has stuck in
one post for twenty years. No, I only want to make my debut.'--'On the
stage?' asked Massol only too happy at that conclusion.--'No, though I
have gesture enough, and figure, and memory. But there's too much wear
and 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 your
choice is made I'll see what I can do'; and he got him, as
Ravenouillet 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, modern
sycophants, septembriseurs, disguised in philanthropy, inventors of
palpitating questions, preaching the emancipation of the negroes,
improvement of little thieves, benevolence to liberated convicts, and
who, nevertheless, leave their porters in a condition worse than that
of the Irish, in holes more dreadful than a mud cabin, and pay them
less money to live on than the State pays to support a convict. I have
done but one good action in my life, and that was to build my porter a
decent lodge."

"Yes," said Bixiou, "if a man, having built a great cage divided into
thousands of compartments like the cells of a beehive or the dens of a
menagerie, constructed to receive human beings of all trades and all
kinds, if that animal, calling itself the proprietor, should go to a
man of science and say: 'I want an individual of the bimanous species,
able to live in holes full of old boots, pestiferous with rags, and
ten 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 little
cupids, work, toil, cultivate flowers, sing there, stay there, and
live in darkness but see and know everything,' most assuredly the man
of science could never have invented the porter to oblige the
proprietor; 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 the
continent by force of misery, as Napoleon fought Europe by force of
regiments."

"Here we are, at my friend the usurer's," said Bixiou. "His name is
Vauvinet. One of the greatest mistakes made by writers who describe
our manners and morals is to harp on old portraits. In these days all
trades change. The grocer becomes a peer of France, artists capitalize
their money, vaudevillists have incomes. A few rare beings may remain
what they originally were, but professions in general have no longer
either their special costume or their formerly fixed habits and ways.
In the past we had Gobseck, Gigounet, Samonon,--the last of the
Romans; to-day we rejoice in Vauvinet, the good-fellow usurer, the
dandy who frequents the greenroom and the lorettes, and drives about
in a little coupe with one horse. Take special note of my man, friend
Gazonal, and you'll see the comedy of money, the cold man who won't
give a penny, the hot man who snuffs a profit; listen to him
attentively!"

All three went up to the second floor of a fine-looking house on the
boulevard des Italiens, where they found themselves surrounded by the
elegances then in fashion. A young man about twenty-eight years of age
advanced to meet them with a smiling face, for he saw Leon de Lora
first. Vauvinet held out his hand with apparent friendliness to
Bixiou, and bowed coldly to Gazonal as he motioned them to enter his
office, where bourgeois taste was visible beneath the artistic
appearance of the furniture, and in spite of the statuettes and the
thousand other little trifles applied to our little apartments by
modern art, which has made itself as small as its patrons.

Vauvinet was dressed, like other young men of our day who go into
business, with extreme elegance, which many of them regard as a
species of prospectus.

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

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

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

"Ah, bah!"

"No; I have given all I had to--you know who. That poor Lousteau went
into partnership for the management of a theatre with an old
vaudevillist who has great influence with the ministry, Ridal; and
they 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 for
a hundred louis, when I lost at lansquenet this morning, at Jenny
Cadine'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 a
sou."

"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't
possibly discount, even at fifty per cent, notes which are drawn by
your porter. Ravenouillet's paper isn't in demand. He's not a
Rothschild. I warn you that his notes are worn thin; you had better
invent another firm. Find an uncle. As for a friend who'll sign notes
for us there's no such being to be found; the matter-of-factness of
the present age is making awful progress."

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

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

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

"How can you expect me to have outstanding business at seven hundred
miles 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 thousand
francs."

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

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

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

"Don't you remember catching me round the waist as if I were a pretty
woman," 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 that
railroad du Tillet and Nucingen have made an offer for?' Well, old
fellow, du Tillet and Nucingen are coming to Carabine's to-night,
where they will meet a number of political characters. You've lost a
fine opportunity. Good-bye to you, old carrot."

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

"One moment, my dear fellow," said the money-lender. "Though I haven't
the money, I have credit. If your notes are worth nothing, I can keep
them and give you notes in exchange. If we can come to an agreement
about that railway stock we could share the profits, of course in due
proportion and I'll allow you that on--"

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

"Ravenouillet is sound," said Vauvinet. "He puts money into the
savings-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 which
keep him dreading either a rise or fall."

"You think you can laugh at me, great man," returned Vauvinet, once
more jovial and caressing; "you've turned La Fontaine's fable of 'Le
Chene et le Roseau' into an elixir-- Come, Gubetta, my old
accomplice," he continued, seizing Bixiou round the waist, "you want
money; well, I can borrow three thousand francs from my friend Cerizet
instead of two; 'Let us be friends, Cinna!' hand over your colossal
cabbages,--made to trick the public like a gardener's catalogue. If I
refused you it was because it is pretty hard on a man who can only do
his poor little business by turning over his money, to have to keep
your Ravenouillet notes in the drawer of his desk. Hard, hard, very
hard!"

"What discount do you want?" asked Bixiou.

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

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

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

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

"Haven't we RE-friended?" said Bixiou, pocketing the five-hundred-
franc bill and the note for four hundred and fifty. "I give you my
word of honor that you shall see du Tillet, and many other men 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 reached
the outer door, listening to Gazonal, who tried to enlighten him on
his 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 laugh
of a Parisian hoaxer,--that cold, mute laugh, a sort of labial north
wind.

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

"Lansquenet is another of the thousand facets of Paris as it is," said
Leon. "And therefore, cousin, I intend to present you to-night in the
salon of a duchess,--a duchess of the rue Saint-Georges, where you
will see the aristocracy of the lorettes, and probably be able to win
your lawsuit. But it is quite impossible to present you anywhere with
that mop of Pyrenean hair; you look like a porcupine; and therefore
we'll take you close by, Place de la Bourse, to Marius, another of our
comedians--"

"Who is he?"

"I'll tell you his tale," said Bixiou. "In the year 1800 a Toulousian
named 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 has
an income of twenty-four thousand francs a year, and lives, retired
from business, at Libourne,--well, he saw that so vulgar and ignoble a
name as Cabot could never attain celebrity. Monsieur de Parny, whose
hair he cut, gave him the name of Marius, infinitely superior, you
perceive, to the Christian names of Armand and Hippolyte, behind which
patronymics attacked by the Cabot evil are wont to hide. All the
successors of Cabot have called themselves Marius. The present Marius
is Marius V.; his real name is Mongin. This occurs in various other
trades; for 'Botot water,' and for 'Little-Virtue' ink. Names become
commercial property in Paris, and have ended by constituting a sort of
ensign 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 many
signs 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 nice
hands, and not be ill-looking. The most remarkable for manners,
appearance, and elocution are sent out to dress heads; and they come
back tired to death. Marius himself never turns out except for titled
women; he drives his cabriolet and has a groom."

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

"Barber!" exclaimed Bixiou; "please remember that he is captain in the
National Guard, and is decorated for being the first to spring into a
barricade 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,"
said Leon, as they went up a staircase with crystal balusters and
mahogany rail, the steps of which were covered with a sumptuous
carpet.

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

"These salons," said Leon, "are three boudoirs where the director has
collected all the inventions of modern luxury: lambrequins to the
windows, jardinieres everywhere, downy divans where each customer can
wait his turn and read the newspapers. You might suppose, when you
first go in, that five francs would be the least they'd get out of
your waistcoat pocket; but nothing is ever extracted beyond ten sous
for combing and frizzing your hair, or twenty sous for cutting and
frizzing. Elegant dressing-tables stand about among the jardinieres;
water is laid on to the washstands; enormous mirrors reproduce the
whole figure. Therefore don't look astonished. When the client (that's
the elegant word substituted by Marius for the ignoble word customer),
--when the client appears at the door, Marius gives him a glance which
appraises him: to Marius you are a HEAD, more or less susceptible of
occupying 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 was
evidently 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. "I
prefer to have my head dressed by Monsieur Marius himself."

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

"I am with you in a moment; I am just finishing. Pray have no
uneasiness, my pupil will prepare you; I alone will decide the cut."

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

"That is only an ordinary head," he said to Leon, pointing to the
person on whom he was operating,--"a grocer, or something of that
kind. But if we devoted ourselves to art only, we should lie in
Bicetre, mad!" and he turned back with an inimitable gesture to his
client, after saying to Regulus, "Prepare monsieur, he is evidently an
artist."

"A journalist," said Bixiou.

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

"I will take charge of monsieur. Look, monsieur," he said to the
grocer, "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 through
this operation of the little scissors?"

"No head ever comes to me uncleansed," replied the illustrious hair-
dresser; "but for your sake, I will do that of monsieur myself,
wholly. My pupils sketch out the scheme, or my strength would not hold
out. Every one says as you do: 'Dressed by Marius!' Therefore, I can
give 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! in
dressing heads which expose us to notice it is impossible. Excuse me!"

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

"There, there! good heavens! that cut is not square; your scissors are
hacking it. Here! see there! Regulus, you are not clipping poodles;
these are men--who have a character; if you continue to look at the
ceiling instead of looking only between the glass and the head, you
will 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 judge
you 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 tell
you that a hair-dresser,--I don't say a good hair-dresser, for a man
is, or he is not, a hair-dresser,--a hair-dresser, I repeat, is more
difficult to find than--what shall I say? than--I don't know what--a
minister?--(Sit still!) No, for you can't judge by ministers, the
streets are full of them. A Paganini? No, he's not great enough. A
hair-dresser, monsieur, a man who divines your soul and your habits,
in order to dress your hair conformably with your being, that man has
all that constitutes a philosopher--and such he is. See the women!
Women appreciate us; they know our value; our value to them is the
conquest they make when they have placed their heads in our hands to
attain a triumph. I say to you that a hair-dresser--the world does not
know what he is. I who speak to you, I am very nearly all that there
is of--without boasting I may say I am known--Still, I think more
might be done--The execution, that is everything! Ah! if women would
only give me carte blanche!--if I might only execute the ideas that
come to me! I have, you see, a hell of imagination!--but the women
don't fall in with it; they have their own plans; they'll stick their
fingers or combs, as soon as my back is turned, through the most
delicious edifices--which ought to be engraved and perpetuated; for
our works, monsieur, last unfortunately but a few hours. A great
hair-dresser, hey! he's like Careme and Vestris in their careers.
(Head a little this way, if you please, SO; I attend particularly to
front faces!) Our profession is ruined by bunglers who understand
neither the epoch nor their art. There are dealers in wigs and
essences who are enough to make one's hair stand on end; they care
only to sell you bottles. It is pitiable! But that's business. Such
poor wretches cut hair and dress it as they can. I, when I arrived in
Paris from Toulouse, my ambition was to succeed the great Marius, to
be a true Marius, to make that name illustrious. I alone, more than
all 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 first
to introduce ELEGANCE; I made my salons the object of curiosity. I
disdain advertisements; what advertisements would have cost, monsieur,
I put into elegance, charm, comfort. Next year I shall have a
quartette 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. I
do not conceal from myself the annoyances to a client. (Look at
yourself!) To have one's hair dressed is fatiguing, perhaps as much so
as posing for one's portrait. Monsieur knows perhaps that the famous
Monsieur Humbolt (I did the best I could with the few hairs America
left him--science has this in common with savages, that she scalps her
men clean), that illustrious savant, said that next to the suffering
of going to be hanged was that of going to be painted; but I place the
trial of having your head dressed before that of being painted, and so
do certain women. Well, monsieur, my object is to make those who come
here to have their hair cut or frizzed enjoy themselves. (Hold still,
you have a tuft which MUST be conquered.) A Jew proposed to supply me
with Italian cantatrices who, during the interludes, were to depilate
the young men of forty; but they proved to be girls from the
Conservatoire, and music-teachers from the Rue Montmartre. There you
are, monsieur; your head is dressed as that of a man of talent ought
to be. Ossian," he said to the lacquey in livery, "dress monsieur and
show him out. Whose turn next?" he added proudly, gazing round upon
the persons who awaited him.

"Don't laugh, Gazonal," said Leon as they reached the foot of the
staircase, whence his eye could take in the whole of the Place de la
Bourse. "I see over there one of our great men, and you shall compare
his language with that of the barber, and tell me which of the two you
think 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 certain
dealer in comestibles who is going to sell us a pate for three francs
has acquired a monopoly of the sale of truffles; he discounts the
paper of that business; he loans money on pawn to clients when
embarrassed; he gives annuities on lives; he gambles at the Bourse; he
is a stockholder in all the fashion papers; and he sells, under the
name of a certain chemist, an infamous drug which, for his share
alone, gives him an income of thirty thousand francs, and costs in
advertisements a hundred thousand yearly."

"Is it possible!" cried Gazonal.

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

The three inseparables (for one day at any rate) now crossed the Place
de 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 way
of 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 to
present to you our illustrious painter Dubourdieu, not less celebrated
for his humanitarian convictions than for his talents in art.
Dubourdieu, my cousin Palafox."

Dubourdieu, a small, pale man with melancholy blue eyes, bowed
slightly 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. "To
choose such a man as that! I don't wish to say ill of him, but he
works at a trade. Where are you dragging the first of arts,--the art
those works are the most lasting; bringing nations to light of which
the world has long lost even the memory; an art which crowns and
consecrates great men? Yes, sculpture is priesthood; it preserves the
ideas of an epoch, and you give its chair to a maker of toys and
mantelpieces, an ornamentationist, a seller of bric-a-brac! Ah! as
Chamfort said, one has to swallow a viper every morning to endure the
life of Paris. Well, at any rate, Art remains to a few of us; they
can't prevent us from cultivating it--"

"And besides, my dear fellow, you have a consolation which few artists
possess; the future is yours," said Bixiou. "When the world is
converted to our doctrine, you will be at the head of your art; for
you are putting into it ideas which people will understand--WHEN they
are generalized! In fifty years from now you'll be to all the world
what you are to a few of us at this moment,--a great man. The only
question is how to get along till then."

"I have just finished," resumed the great artist, his face expanding
like that of a man whose hobby is stroked, "an allegorical figure of
Harmony; and if you will come and see it, you will understand why it
should have taken me two years to paint it. Everything is in it! At
the first glance one divines the destiny of the globe. A queen holds a
shepherd's crook in her hand,--symbolical of the advancement of the
races useful to mankind; she wears on her head the cap of Liberty; her
breasts are sixfold, as the Egyptians carved them--for the Egyptians
foresaw Fourier; her feet are resting on two clasped hands which
embrace a globe,--symbol of the brotherhood of all human races; she
tramples cannon under foot to signify the abolition of war; and I have
tried 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 the
least among Fourier's titles to veneration that he has restored the
gift of thought to plants; he has bound all creation in one by the
signification 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, stupefied
at hearing a man outside of a lunatic asylum talk in this way.

"Through the extending of production. If men will apply The System, it
will 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 two
friends significantly.

"Man will return to what he was before he became degenerate; our six-
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 my
picture the public should hear music a la Beethoven to develop its
ideas and bring them within range of the intellect by two arts. Ah! if
the 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 an
opportunity to strike minds."

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

"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 her
courses."

"His skill is masterly," said Leon, "and he knows his art, but
Fourierism has killed him. You have just seen, cousin, one of the
effects of ambition upon artists. Too often, in Paris, from a desire
to reach more rapidly than by natural ways the celebrity which to them
is fortune, artists borrow the wings of circumstance, they think they
make themselves of more importance as men of a specialty, the
supporters of some 'system'; and they fancy they can transform a
clique into the public. One is a republican, another Saint-Simonian;
this one aristocrat, that one Catholic, others juste-milieu, middle
ages, or German, as they choose for their purpose. Now, though
opinions do not give talent, they always spoil what talent there is;
and the poor fellow whom you have just seen is a proof thereof. An
artist's opinion ought to be: Faith in his art, in his work; and his
only way of success is toil when nature has given him the sacred
fire."

"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 of
barbers just now."

"He is mad!" repeated Gazonal.

"And he is not the first man driven man by Fourier's ideas," said
Bixiou. "You don't know anything about Paris. Ask it for a hundred
thousand 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 is
the same with systems as it is with material things. Utterly
impracticable newspapers have consumed millions within the last
fifteen years. What makes your lawsuit so hard to win, is that you
have right on your side, and on that of the prefect there are (so you
suppose) secret motives."

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

"Suppose we take Gazonal to old Mere Fontaine?" said Bixiou, making a
sign to the driver of a citadine to draw up; "it will be a step from
the 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 you
a woman who makes twenty thousand francs a year by working a fantastic
idea."

"A fortune-teller," said Bixiou, interpreting the look of the
Southerner as a question. "Madame Fontaine is thought, by those who
seek to pry into the future, to be wiser in her wisdom than
Mademoiselle 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 without
corresponding outlays. The strongest heads are liable to crack there,
as if to give vent to their steam. Those who make much money have
vices 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 entered
one of the oldest houses in that street and passed up a shaking
staircase, the steps of which, caked with mud, led them in semi-
darkness, and through a stench peculiar to houses on an alley, to the
third story, where they beheld a door which painting alone could
render; literature would have to spend too many nights in suitably
describing it.

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

Gazonal, who played the intrepid, entered bravely, and found himself
in presence of one of those women forgotten by Death, who no doubt
forgets them intentionally in order to leave some samples of Itself
among the living. He saw before him a withered face in which shone
fixed gray eyes of wearying immobility; a flattened nose, smeared with
snuff; knuckle-bones well set up by muscles that, under pretence of
being hands, played nonchalantly with a pack of cards, like some
machine the movement of which is about to run down. The body, a
species of broom-handle decently covered with clothes, enjoyed the
advantages of death and did not stir. Above the forehead rose a coif
of black velvet. Madame Fontaine, for it was really a woman, had a
black hen on her right hand and a huge toad, named Astaroth, on her
left. Gazonal did not at first perceive them.

The toad, of surprising dimensions, was less alarming in himself than
through the effect of two topaz eyes, large as a ten-sous piece, which
cast forth vivid gleams. It was impossible to endure that look. The
toad is a creature as yet unexplained. Perhaps the whole animal
creation, including man, is comprised in it; for, as Lassailly said,
the toad exists indefinitely; and, as we know, it is of all created
animals 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 which
formed a sort of drawbridge between the cage and the table.

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

The den of the sibyl was much darker than the antechamber; the color
of the walls could scarcely be distinguished. The ceiling, blackened
by smoke, far from reflecting the little light that came from a window
obstructed by pale and sickly vegetations, absorbed the greater part
of it; but the table where the sorceress sat received what there was
of this half-light fully. The table, the chair of the woman, and that
on which Gazonal was seated, formed the entire furniture of the little
room, which was divided at one end by a sort of loft where Madame
Fontaine probably slept. Gazonal heard through a half-opened door the
bubbling murmur of a soup-pot. That kitchen sound, accompanied by a
composite odor in which the effluvia of a sink predominated, mingled
incongruous ideas of the necessities of actual life with those of
supernatural power. Disgust entered into curiosity.

Gazonal observed one stair of pine wood, the lowest no doubt of the
staircase which led to the loft. He took in these minor details at a
glance, with a sense of nausea. It was all quite otherwise alarming
than the romantic tales and scenes of German drama lead one to expect;
here was suffocating actuality. The air diffused a sort of dizzy
heaviness, the dim light rasped the nerves. When the Southerner,
impelled by a species of self-assertion, gazed firmly at the toad, he
felt a sort of emetic heat at the pit of his stomach, and was
conscious of a terror like that a criminal might feel in presence of a
gendarme. He endeavoured to brace himself by looking at Madame
Fontaine; but there he encountered two almost white eyes, the
motionless 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-franc
fortune, or the grand game?"

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

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

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

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

"What flower to you like best?" asked the old woman, in a voice
hoarsened by the phlegm which seemed to rise and fall incessantly in
her 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 said
sententiously. "Hence his instincts; and his instincts rule his
destiny. 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 was
shown to her. It was all done seriously, with no pretence of sorcery;
on the contrary, with the simplicity a notary might have shown when
asking the intentions of a client about a deed. Presently she shuffled
the cards, and asked Gazonal to cut them, and then to make three packs
of them himself. After which she took the packs, spread them out
before her, and examined them as a gambler examines the thirty-six
numbers at roulette before he risks his stake. Gazonal's bones were
freezing; he seemed not to know where he was; but his amazement grew
greater and greater when this hideous old woman in a green bonnet,
stout and squat, whose false front was frizzed into points of
interrogation, proceeded, in a thick voice, to relate to him all the
particular circumstances, even the most secret, of his past life: she
told him his tastes, his habits, his character; the thoughts of his
childhood; everything that had influenced his life; a marriage broken
off, 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; but
the absolute impossibility of such a conspiracy appeared to him almost
as soon as the idea itself, and he sat speechless before that truly
infernal power, the incarnation of which borrowed from humanity a form
which the imagination of painters and poets has throughout all ages
regarded as the most awful of created things,--namely, a toothless,
hideous, wheezing hag, with cold lips, flattened nose, and whitish
eyes. The pupils of those eyes had brightened, through them rushed a
ray,--was it from the depths of the future or from hell?

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

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

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

"Let us get away!" he said to the two artists. "Did you ever consult
that 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 should
have 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 consult
Madame 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 by
a sudden thought, "if she can, by the help of those dreadful
collaborators, predict the future, how came she to lose in the
lottery?"

"Ah! you put your finger on one of the greatest mysteries of occult
science," replied Leon. "The moment that the species of inward mirror
on which the past or the future is reflected to their minds become
clouded by the breath of a personal feeling, by an idea foreign to the
purpose of the power they are exerting, sorcerers and sorceresses can
see nothing; just as an artist who blurs art with political
combinations and systems loses his genius. Not long ago, a man endowed
with the gift of divining by cards, a rival to Madame Fontaine, became
addicted to vicious practices, and being unable to tell his own fate
from the cards, was arrested, tried, and condemned at the court of
assizes. Madame Fontaine, who predicts the future eight times out of
ten, 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't
magnetize himself."

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

"Friend Gazonal," replied Bixiou, gravely, "to be able to laugh at
everything one must know everything. As for me, I've been in Paris
since my childhood; I've lived, by means of my pencil, on its follies
and 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 the
Chamber and settle the cousin's affair."

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

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

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

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

"An artist-pedicure," replied Bixiou, "author of a 'Treatise on
Corporistics,' who cuts your corns by subscription, and who, if the
Republications triumph for six months, will assuredly become
immortal."

"Drives his carriage!" ejaculated Gazonal.

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

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

"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,--we
are now proceeding like the Roman cicerone, who shows you in Saint
Peter's the thumb of the statue you took to be life-size, and the
thumb proves to be a foot long. You haven't yet measured so much as a
great toe of Paris."

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

"This evening you shall sup as they feasted at Belshazzar's; and there
you 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 the
steps going up to the Chamber of Deputies, at that end of the Pont de
la Concorde which leads to discord.

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

"That depends," replied Bixiou; "materially speaking, it costs thirty
sous for a citadine to approach it; politically, you have to spend
rather more. The swallows thought, so a poet says, that the Arc de
Triomphe was erected for them; we artists think that this public
building was built for us,--to compensate for the stupidities of the
Theatre-Francais and make us laugh; but the comedians on this stage
are much more expensive; and they don't give us every day the value of
our money."

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

Leon went to speak to one of the ushers who go and come continually
between this hall and the hall of sessions, with which it communicates
by 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 approached
them, "he is there, but I don't know if Monsieur Giraud has come. I'll
see."

As the usher opened one side of the double door through which none but
deputies, ministers, or messengers from the king are allowed to pass,
Gazonal saw a man come out who seemed still young, although he was
really forty-eight years old, and to whom the usher evidently
indicated 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 might
get rusty if we didn't."

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

Seeing that this new-comer was well-dressed, in black, the provincial
did not know in which political category to place him; but he followed
the others into the garden contiguous to the hall which follows the
line of the quai Napoleon. Once in the garden the ci-devant young man
gave way to a peal of laughter which he seemed to have been repressing
since he entered the lobby.

"What is it?" asked Leon de Lora.

"My dear friend, to prove the sincerity of the constitutional
government we are forced to tell the most frightful lies with
incredible self-possession. But as for me, I'm freakish; some days I
can lie like a prospectus; other days I can't be serious. This is one
of my hilarious days. Now, at this moment, the prime minister, being
summoned by the Opposition to make known a certain diplomatic secret,
is going through his paces in the tribune. Being an honest man who
never lies on his own account, he whispered to me as he mounted the
breach: 'Heaven knows what I shall say to them.' A mad desire to laugh
overcame me, and as one mustn't laugh on the ministerial bench I
rushed out, for my youth does come back to me most unseasonably at
times."

"At last," cried Gazonal, "I've found an honest man in Paris! You must
be 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 his
honor as for my own. It is on his account we have come here now; he
has a case before the administration which depends on your ministry.
His prefect evidently wants to ruin him, and we have come to see you
in order to prevent the Council of State from ratifying a great
injustice."

"Who brings up the case?"

"Massol."

"Good."

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

"Say just a word to them," urged Leon; "tell them to come to-night to
Carabine's, where du Tillet gives a fete apropos of railways,--they
are 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 the
statesman, looking hard at Gazonal.

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

"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 and
rushing precipitately back to the Chamber.

"Who is that?" asked Gazonal.

"The Comte de Rastignac; the minister of the department in which your
affair 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 francs
a year; he's a peer of France; the king has made him a count; he
married Nucingen's daughter; and he is one of the two or three
statesmen produced by the revolution of July. But his fame and his
power bore him sometimes, and he comes down to laugh with us."

"Ah ca! cousin; why didn't you tell us you belonged to the
Opposition?" asked Leon, seizing Gazonal by the arm. "How stupid of
you! 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 have
Providence on their side, and Providence will bring them back without
you and in spite of themselves. A manufacturer ought to be a
fatalist."

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

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

And all three advanced to the above-named personages, who seemed to be
sauntering 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 a
little 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 moment
tending toward the Right.

"Ah! but you had a fine triumph just now," said Maxime to Canalis; "it
was 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 would
you have done?"

"I should have lied."

"It isn't called lying," said Maxime de Trailles; "it is called
protecting 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, and
sonorous, 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 he
ever 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 Giraud
by the arm and led him off, probably to make the same confidence he
had 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," replied
Canalis.

"Do you think him a good orator?"

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

At the moment when Canalis uttered this judgment on Giraud, the latter
was returning with Maxime to the group; and forgetting the presence of
a stranger whose discretion was not known to them like that of Leon
and 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 with
great severity."

"Then we shall have the house with us, for a man of your weight and
your eloquence is certain to have the ear of the Chamber," said
Canalis. "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 you
can do what you like with the Chamber, and be master of the
situation."

"Maxime has trapped them both," said Leon to his cousin; "that fellow
is 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 the
Chamber without asking Rastignac what he promised to tell you about a
suit you are to render a decision on two days hence. It concerns my
cousin here; I'll go and see you to-morrow morning early about it."

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

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

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

"Yes; you've now seen the heart of the government, cousin, and you
must 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 to
launch a flood of oratorical and Southern bile upon the elements.

"I distrusted with all my might this great hussy of a town," he rolled
out in Southern accents; "but since this morning I despise her! The
poor little province you think so petty is an honest girl; but Paris
is a prostitute, a greedy, lying comedian; and I am very thankful not
to be robbed of my skin in it."

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

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

"Try me!"

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

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

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

This conversation brought Gazonal back to his cousin's house, where
the 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 his
evening toilet to the great wonderment of Gazonal, who counted the
thousand and one superfluities of his cousin, and admired the
solemnity of the valet as he performed his functions, the "pedicure of
monsieur" was announced, and Publicola Masson, a little man fifty
years of age, made his appearance, laid a small box of instruments on
the floor, and sat down on a small chair opposite to Leon, after
bowing to Gazonal and Bixiou.

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

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

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

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

"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 now
Europe will be with us. Switzerland and Italy are fermenting finely;
and when the occasion comes we are all ready. Here, in Paris, we have
fifty thousand armed men, without counting two hundred thousand
citizens 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 the
world,--a machine, due to a doctor, which cured more people during the
short time we worked it than the doctors ever killed."

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

"Ha! that's the thing we rely on! We follow Saint-Just and
Robespierre; but we'll do better than they; they were timid, and you
see 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 that
kind, tribune perhaps, be good enough to remember," said Bixiou, "that
I have asked your protection for the last dozen years."

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

"And I?" said Leon.

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

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

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

"No more religion OF THE STATE," replied the pedicure, emphasizing the
last words; "every man will have his own. It is very fortunate that
the government is just now endowing convents; they'll provide our
funds. Everything, you see, conspires in our favour. Those who pity
the peoples, who clamor on behalf of proletaries, who write works
against the Jesuits, who busy themselves about the amelioration of no
matter what,--the communists, the humanitarians, the philanthropists,
you understand,--all these people are our advanced guard. While we are
storing gunpowder, they are making the tinder which the spark of a
single circumstance will ignite."

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

"Equality of citizens and cheapness of provisions. We mean that there
will be no persons lacking anything, no millionaires, no suckers of
blood 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 of
France; each will have his ration as on board ship; and all the world
will work according to their capacity."

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

"I cut their nails," said the radical republican, putting up his tools
and 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 the
personages of 1793, and you could talk with them. You have just seen
Marat; 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 'Les
Saltimbauques' to-night," said Leon to Gazonal, "we must go and pay a
visit to Madame Cadine,--an actress whom your committee-man Massol
cultivates, and to whom you must therefore pay the most assiduous
court."

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

"Of course I do," replied Gazonal.

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

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

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

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

The three friends went up to the second floor of a rather handsome
house, and found Madame Jenny Cadine just finishing dinner, for she
played that night in an afterpiece at the Gymnase. Having presented
Gazonal to this great power, Leon and Bixiou, in order to leave them
alone together, made the excuse of looking at a piece of furniture in
another room; but before leaving, Bixiou had whispered in the
actress's ear: "He is Leon's cousin, a manufacturer, enormously rich;
he wants to win a suit before the Council of State against his
prefect, and he thinks it wise to fascinate you in order to get Massol
on his side."

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

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

"Ah, yes, indeed! but how can I help it? Massol is not rich; I am
hoping 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 better
of Carabine."

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

"Will monsieur be there?" said Jenny Cadine, looking artlessly and
graciously 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, my
treasures; I must go to the theatre."

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

When the three friends got back into their own vehicle, Gazonal
endeavoured 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 the
trio to the house of Mademoiselle Seraphine Sinet, better known under
the name of Carabine,--one of those pseudonyms which famous lorettes
take, or which are given to them; a name which, in this instance, may
have 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 of
courtesans. A broker had brought there, about the year 1827, Suzanne
du Val-Noble, afterwards Madame Gaillard. In that house the famous
Esther caused the Baron de Nucingen to commit the only follies of his
life. Florine, and subsequently, a person now called in jest "the late
Madame Schontz," had scintillated there in turn. Bored by his wife, du
Tillet bought this modern little house, and there installed the
celebrated Carabine, whose lively wit and cavalier manners and
shameless brilliancy were a counterpoise to the dulness of domestic
life, and the toils of finance and politics.

Whether du Tillet or Carabine were at home or not at home, supper was
served, and splendidly served, for ten persons every day. Artists, men
of letters, journalists, and the habitues of the house supped there
when they pleased. After supper they gambled. More than one member of
both Chambers came there to buy what Paris pays for by its weight in
gold,--namely, the amusement of intercourse with anomalous
untrammelled women, those meteors of the Parisian firmament who are so
difficult to class. There wit reigns; for all can be said, and all is
said. Carabine, a rival of the no less celebrated Malaga, had finally
inherited the salon of Florine, now Madame Raoul Nathan, and of Madame
Schontz, now wife of Chief-Justice du Ronceret.

As he entered, Gazonal made one remark only, but that remark was both
legitimate and legitimist: "It is finer than the Tuileries!" The
satins, velvets, brocades, the gold, the objects of art that swarmed
there, so filled the eyes of the wary provincial that at first he did
not 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, a
manufacturer, who descended upon me from the Pyrenees this morning. He
knows nothing of Paris, and he wants Massol to help him in a suit he
has before the Council of State. We have therefore taken the liberty
to bring him--his name is Gazonal--to supper, entreating you to leave
him his full senses."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"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 to
give nothing.

Massol, Claude Vignon, du Tillet, Maxime de Trailles, Nucingen, du
Bruel, Malaga, Monsieur and Madame Gaillard, Vauvinet, and a crowd of
other 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 not
yet written, and that citizens could always rely on the knowledge and
the independence of the Council of State. Receiving that cold and
dignified response, Gazonal, in despair, thought it necessary to set
about seducing the charming Jenny, with whom he was by this time in
love. Leon de Lora and Bixiou left their victim in the hands of that
most roguish and frolicsome member of the anomalous society,--for
Jenny Cadine is the sole rival in that respect of the famous Dejazet.

At the supper-table, where Gazonal was fascinated by a silver service
made by the modern Benvenuto Cellini, Froment-Meurice, the contents of
which were worthy of the container, his mischievous friends were
careful to sit at some distance from him; but they followed with
cautious eye the manoeuvres of the clever actress, who, being
attracted by the insidious hope of getting her furniture renewed, was
playing her cards to take the provincial home with her. No sheep upon
the day of the Fete-Dieu ever more meekly allowed his little Saint
John to lead him along than Gazonal as he followed his siren.

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

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

"Maybe, but it is useless now, cousin," said Gazonal, lifting a
melancholy 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," replied
Gazonal. "Madame Jenny Cadine has got notes of hand out of me to the
amount 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 a
woman! Well, I'll own the provinces are not a match for Paris; I shall
retire to La Trappe."

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

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

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, and
amused you?" said Bixiou.

"AND fooled you," added Leon, making the gesture of gamins to express
the 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





End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Unconscious Comedians, by Balzac