“What is one to do in the midst of such a tumult?” inquired Eusebe.
“Laugh,” responded the poet; “laugh, so that you may not weep; turn to account the vices of one class and the virtues of another, and close your eyes to what the morrow may bring forth.”
“Admitting the justness of this theory,” said Eusebe, “it seems to me very difficult to gain a sufficient knowledge of men to enable one to profit by their merits or weaknesses.”
“One knows everybody else better than one knows one’s self. Do you see that gentleman who is walking before us? He is dressed like a prince, dines at the best tables, and denies himself nothing. Four years ago, he arrived at Paris in sabots. Now he is in debt for his boots,—which explains the whole mystery. That fellow would refuse the pension of a Councillor of State: he gains more by borrowing.”
“I understand, then, that he has a confirmed vice. But what advantage can you draw from his peculiar defect?”
“I borrow money of him.”
Eusebe was inclined to think that Clamens was quizzing him, as Paul Buck had quizzed Bonnaud on the railroad; but the poet did not give him time to determine whether this suspicion was justifiable.
“I borrow money of him,” continued Clamens, “and he loans it because he appreciates better than anybody else the necessity of having it. Adroit himself in chasing up twenty-franc pieces, he thinks he has in me a promising pupil. Then his loans to me serve as an excuse to his conscience. If he strips others, he considers that I strip him, and, therefore, concludes that, instead of practising the trade of a sharper, he is only making an application of the lex talionis. The man is not exactly a dangerous character; but he has ten thousand confrères, who prey upon forty thousand fools, and their mode of life operates to the detriment of a hundred thousand poor devils, who perish from hunger or find their way to the galleys. I suppose that the term ‘usurer’ represents to your mind a miserly old man in a brown overcoat and a black silk cap?”
“There is in my native province,” replied Eusebe, “an old man named Gardet, who is said to be very grinding on the poor who borrow money from him; and it is a fact that this creature is attired nearly as you say, with the exception of the black silk cap. In a number of books that I have read during the past two years, the usurer is always described as dressed in that style.”