Unconscious Comedians

“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.”