“My dear friend,” said Vauvinet, “if I had the money, I couldn’t possibly discount, even at fifty per cent, notes which are drawn by your porter. Ravenouillet’s paper isn’t in demand. He’s not a Rothschild. I warn you that his notes are worn thin; you had better invent another firm. Find an uncle. As for a friend who’ll sign notes for us there’s no such being to be found; the matter-of-factness of the present age is making awful progress.”
“I have a friend,” said Bixiou, motioning to Leon’s cousin. “Monsieur here; one of the most distinguished manufacturers of cloth in the South, named Gazonal. His hair is not very well dressed,” added Bixiou, looking at the touzled and luxuriant crop on the provincial’s head, “but I am going to take him to Marius, who will make him look less like a poodle-dog, an appearance so injurious to his credit, and to ours.”
“I don’t believe in Southern securities, be it said without offence to monsieur,” replied Vauvinet, with whom Gazonal was so entertained that he did not resent his insolence.
Gazonal, that extremely penetrating intellect, thought that the painter and Bixiou intended, by way of teaching him to know Paris, to make him pay the thousand francs for his breakfast at the Cafe de Paris, for this son of the Pyrenees had never got out of that armor of distrust which incloses the provincial in Paris.
“How can you expect me to have outstanding business at seven hundred miles from Paris?” added Vauvinet.
“Then you refuse me positively?” asked Bixiou.
“I have twenty francs, and no more,” said the young usurer.
“I’m sorry for you,” said the joker. “I thought I was worth a thousand francs.”
“You are worth two hundred thousand francs,” replied Vauvinet, “and sometimes you are worth your weight in gold, or at least your tongue is; but I tell you I haven’t a penny.”
“Very good,” replied Bixiou; “then we won’t say anything more about it. I had arranged for this evening, at Carabine’s, the thing you most wanted—you know?”