Cherami soon found one of the great furnishing shops where you can procure a complete change of raiment, from head to foot. He bought a pair of trousers, very full, a thickly padded waistcoat, and a roomy coat; and he put them all on over the clothes he was wearing.
"I am like Bias, one of the seven sages of Greece," he said; "I carry my whole wardrobe on my back."
Cherami made all these purchases for ninety francs. He left the shop much stouter than he entered, and his double trousers compelled him to walk with a certain gravity. But he was so content, he considered himself so comely in his new clothes, that he smiled benignly on everybody, even on the cabmen who passed him. But something was still lacking: since he had restored Monsieur Courbichon's cane, he had not replaced it, for lack of funds; and that was to him a great privation. Now he could gratify his longing; a man who has four hundred and ten francs in his pocket, after purchasing a new outfit throughout, can well afford to humor his fancy for a cane.
Cherami spied a shop where canes of all sorts were for sale; he examined a score, among which there were some very expensive ones. After hesitating for some time between a superb Malacca joint at seventy-five francs, and a light switch at a hundred sous, he finally decided upon the latter. "For, after all," he reflected, "I don't need a cane to lean on! Thank God, I haven't the gout! I will take the switch; it can be used as a crop when I ride; and then, I like something that bends—one can play with it."
Armed with his switch, with which he beat the air in a very unpleasant fashion for those who passed him, Cherami betook himself to the Palais-Royal, saying to himself:
"I think I will dine at Les Frères Provençaux. I like that old-fashioned house; you are always treated well there. It's a little dear, perhaps, but one can't pay too much for what is good."
"Pray be careful, monsieur! you hit me with your cane!"
"What's the matter, monsieur? what are you complaining about?"
"You hit me with your cane, I tell you."
"In the first place, monsieur, it isn't a cane; it's a switch; in the second place, you have only to walk farther away from me."