During this monstrous breakfast—advisedly so called in view of six dozen Osten oysters, six cutlets a la Soubise, a chicken a la Marengo, lobster mayonnaise, green peas, a mushroom pasty, washed down with three bottles of Bordeaux, three bottles of Champagne, plus coffee and liqueurs, to say nothing of relishes—Gazonal was magnificent in his diatribes against Paris. The worthy manufacturer complained of the length of the four-pound bread-loaves, the height of the houses, the indifference of the passengers in the streets to one another, the cold, the rain, the cost of hackney-coaches, all of which and much else he bemoaned in so witty a manner that the two artists took a mighty fancy to cousin Gazonal, and made him relate his lawsuit from beginning to end.
“My lawsuit,” he said in his Southern accent and rolling his r’s, “is a very simple thing; they want my manufactory. I’ve employed here in Paris a dolt of a lawyer, to whom I give twenty francs every time he opens an eye, and he is always asleep. He’s a slug, who drives in his coach, while I go afoot and he splashes me. I see now I ought to have had a carriage! On the other hand, that Council of State are a pack of do-nothings, who leave their duties to little scamps every one of whom is bought up by our prefect. That’s my lawsuit! They want my manufactory! Well, they’ll get it! and they must manage the best they can with my workmen, a hundred of ‘em, who’ll make them sing another tune before they’ve done with them.”
“Two years. Ha! that meddling prefect! he shall pay dear for this; I’ll have his life if I have to give mine on the scaffold—”
“Which state councillor presides over your section?”
“A former newspaper man,—doesn’t pay ten sous in taxes,—his name is Massol.”
The two Parisians exchanged glances.
“Who is the commissioner who is making the report?”
“Ha! that’s still more queer; he’s Master of Petitions, professor of something or other at the Sorbonne,—a fellow who writes things in reviews, and for whom I have the profoundest contempt.”
“Claude Vignon,” said Bixiou.
“Yes, that’s his name,” replied Gazonal. “Massol and Vignon—there you have Social Reason, in which there’s no reason at all.”