“Since the firm bought up Maxime’s debts, Cerizet’s likeness to a bailiff’s officer grew more and more striking, and one morning after seven fruitless attempts he succeeded in penetrating into the Count’s presence. Suzon, the old man-servant, albeit he was by no means in his novitiate, at last mistook the visitor for a petitioner, come to propose a thousand crowns if Maxime would obtain a license to sell postage stamps for a young lady. Suzon, without the slightest suspicion of the little scamp, a thoroughbred Paris street-boy into whom prudence had been rubbed by repeated personal experience of the police-courts, induced his master to receive him. Can you see the man of business, with an uneasy eye, a bald forehead, and scarcely any hair on his head, standing in his threadbare jacket and muddy boots—”
“What a picture of a Dun!” cried Lousteau.
“—standing before the Count, that image of flaunting Debt, in his blue flannel dressing-gown, slippers worked by some Marquise or other, trousers of white woolen stuff, and a dazzling shirt? There he stood, with a gorgeous cap on his black dyed hair, playing with the tassels at his waist—”
“‘Tis a bit of genre for anybody who knows what the pretty little morning room, hung with silk and full of valuable paintings, where Maxime breakfasts,” said Nathan. “You tread on a Smyrna carpet, you admire the sideboards filled with curiosities and rarities fit to make a King of Saxony envious—”
“Now for the scene itself,” said Desroches, and the deepest silence followed.
“‘Monsieur le Comte,’ began Cerizet, ‘I have come from a M. Charles Claparon, who used to be a banker—’
“‘Ah! poor devil, and what does he want with me?’
“‘Well, he is at present your creditor for a matter of three thousand two hundred francs, seventy-five centimes, principal, interest, and costs—’
“‘Coutelier’s business?’ put in Maxime, who knew his affairs as a pilot knows his coast.
“‘Yes, Monsieur le Comte,’ said Cerizet with a bow. ‘I have come to ask your intentions.’