“Here we are, at my friend the usurer’s,” said Bixiou. “His name is Vauvinet. One of the greatest mistakes made by writers who describe our manners and morals is to harp on old portraits. In these days all trades change. The grocer becomes a peer of France, artists capitalize their money, vaudevillists have incomes. A few rare beings may remain what they originally were, but professions in general have no longer either their special costume or their formerly fixed habits and ways. In the past we had Gobseck, Gigounet, Samonon,—the last of the Romans; to-day we rejoice in Vauvinet, the good-fellow usurer, the dandy who frequents the greenroom and the lorettes, and drives about in a little coupe with one horse. Take special note of my man, friend Gazonal, and you’ll see the comedy of money, the cold man who won’t give a penny, the hot man who snuffs a profit; listen to him attentively!”
All three went up to the second floor of a fine-looking house on the boulevard des Italiens, where they found themselves surrounded by the elegances then in fashion. A young man about twenty-eight years of age advanced to meet them with a smiling face, for he saw Leon de Lora first. Vauvinet held out his hand with apparent friendliness to Bixiou, and bowed coldly to Gazonal as he motioned them to enter his office, where bourgeois taste was visible beneath the artistic appearance of the furniture, and in spite of the statuettes and the thousand other little trifles applied to our little apartments by modern art, which has made itself as small as its patrons.
Vauvinet was dressed, like other young men of our day who go into business, with extreme elegance, which many of them regard as a species of prospectus.
“I’ve come for some money,” said Bixiou, laughing, and presenting his notes.
Vauvinet assumed a serious air, which made Gazonal smile, such difference was there between the smiling visage that received them and the countenance of the money-lender recalled to business.
“My dear fellow,” said Vauvinet, looking at Bixiou, “I should certainly oblige you with the greatest pleasure, but I haven’t any money to loan at the present time.”
“Ah, bah!”
“No; I have given all I had to—you know who. That poor Lousteau went into partnership for the management of a theatre with an old vaudevillist who has great influence with the ministry, Ridal; and they came to me yesterday for thirty thousand francs. I’m cleaned out, and so completely that I was just in the act of sending to Cerizet for a hundred louis, when I lost at lansquenet this morning, at Jenny Cadine’s.”
“You must indeed me hard-up if you can’t oblige this poor Bixiou,” said Leon de Lora; “for he can be very sharp-tongued when he hasn’t a sou.”
“Well,” said Bixiou, “I could never say anything but good of Vauvinet; he’s full of goods.”