“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?”
“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.