Unconscious Comedians

“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 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.”