“Yes, because he was the only one who ridiculed himself.”
“Poor lad!” repeated Bixiou, “why slight me, who am always ridiculing myself? You are like a pug-dog barking at a tiger. Ha! if you saw us really ridiculing a man, you’d see that we can drive a sane man mad.”
This conversation brought Gazonal back to his cousin’s house, where the sight of luxury silenced him, and put an end to the discussion. Too late he perceived that Bixiou had been making him pose.
At half-past five o’clock, the moment when Leon de Lora was making his evening toilet to the great wonderment of Gazonal, who counted the thousand and one superfluities of his cousin, and admired the solemnity of the valet as he performed his functions, the “pedicure of monsieur” was announced, and Publicola Masson, a little man fifty years of age, made his appearance, laid a small box of instruments on the floor, and sat down on a small chair opposite to Leon, after bowing to Gazonal and Bixiou.
“How are matters going with you?” asked Leon, delivering to Publicola one of his feet, already washed and prepared by the valet.
“I am forced to take two pupils,—two young fellows who, despairing of fortune, have quitted surgery for corporistics; they were actually dying of hunger; and yet they are full of talent.”
“I’m not asking you about pedestrial affairs, I want to know how you are getting on politically.”
Masson gave a glance at Gazonal, more eloquent than any species of question.
“Oh! you can speak out, that’s my cousin; in a way he belongs to you; he thinks himself legitimist.”
“Well! we are coming along, we are advancing! In five years from now Europe will be with us. Switzerland and Italy are fermenting finely; and when the occasion comes we are all ready. Here, in Paris, we have fifty thousand armed men, without counting two hundred thousand citizens who haven’t a penny to live upon.”