“Indeed!”
“Imagine a man about fifty years old, stiff as a post, with a face about as pleasant as a prison-gate. That’s the boss! Summer and winter, he wore laced shoes, blue stockings, gray pantaloons that were too short, a cotton necktie, and a frock-coat that came down to his ankles. In the street, you would have taken him for a hosier who had retired before his fortune was made.”
“You don’t say so!”
“No, never have I seen a man look so much like an old miser. You think, perhaps, that he came in a carriage. Not a bit of it! He came in the omnibus, my boy, and outside too, for three sous; and when it rained he opened his umbrella. But the moment he had crossed the threshold of the house, presto, pass! complete change of scene. The miser became pacha. He took off his old duds, put on a blue velvet robe; and then there was nothing handsome enough, nothing good enough, nothing expensive enough for him. And, when he had acted the my lord to his heart’s content, he put on his old traps again, resumed his prison-gate face, climbed up on top of the omnibus, and went off as he came.”
“And you were not surprised, all of you, at such a life?”
“Very much so.”
“And you did not think that these singular whims must conceal something?”
“Oh, but we did!”
“And you didn’t try to find out what that something was?”
“How could we?”