“Now I am your boarder,” said he, passing a handsome hand with neatly trimmed nails over his beard. “We shall get on well together, you will see. How charming it was of you to remember the Plassans youngster and to busy yourself about everything, at the first word!”
“No, do not thank me. I am a great deal too lazy, I never move. It was Achille who arranged everything. And, besides, was it not sufficient that my mother mentioned to us your desire to board in some family, for us to think at once of opening our doors to you? You will not be with strangers, and will be company for us.”
Then, he told her of his own affairs. After having obtained a bachelor’s diploma, to please his family, he had just passed three years at Marseilles, in a big calico print warehouse, which had a factory in the neighbourhood of Plassans. He had a passion for trade, the trade in women’s luxuries, into which enters a seduction, a slow possession by gilded words and adulatory glances. And he related, laughing victoriously, how he had made the five thousand francs, without which he would never have ventured on coming to Paris, for he had the prudence of a Jew beneath the exterior of an amiable giddy-headed fellow.
“Just fancy, they had a Pompadour calico, an old design, something marvellous. No one would bite at it; it had been stowed away in the cellars for two years past. Then, as I was about to travel through the departments of the Var and the Basses-Alpes, it occurred to me to purchase the whole of the stock and to sell it on my own account. Oh! such a success! an amazing success! The women quarrelled for the remnants; and to-day, there is not one there who is not wearing some of my calico. I must say that I talked them over so nicely! They were all with me, I might have done as I pleased with them.”
And he laughed, whilst Madame Campardon, charmed, and troubled by thought of that Pompadour calico, questioned him: “Little bouquets on an unbleached ground, was it not?” She had been trying to obtain the same thing everywhere for a summer dressing-gown.
“I have travelled for two years, which is enough,” resumed he. “Besides, there is Paris to conquer. I must immediately look out for something.”