Part 18

“Try me!”

“Poor lad!” said Leon, shrugging his shoulders, “haven’t you already promised Rastignac your electoral influence?”

“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.”

“Pooh,” said Leon, “how about the fortifications?”

“Pie-crust; we can swallow them,” replied Masson.

“In the first place, we sha’n’t let the cannon in, and, in the second, we’ve got a little machine more powerful than all the forts in the world,--a machine, due to a doctor, which cured more people during the short time we worked it than the doctors ever killed.”

“How you talk!” exclaimed Gazonal, whose flesh began to creep at Publicola’s air and manner.

“Ha! that’s the thing we rely on! We follow Saint-Just and Robespierre; but we’ll do better than they; they were timid, and you see what came of it; an emperor! the elder branch! the younger branch! The Montagnards didn’t lop the social tree enough.”

“Ah ca! you, who will be, they tell me, consul, or something of that kind, tribune perhaps, be good enough to remember,” said Bixiou, “that I have asked your protection for the last dozen years.”

“No harm shall happen to you; we shall need wags, and you can take the place of Barere,” replied the corn-doctor.

“And I?” said Leon.

“Ah, you! you are my client, and that will save you; for genius is an odious privilege, to which too much is accorded in France; we shall be forced to annihilate some of our greatest men in order to teach others to be simple citizens.”

The corn-cutter spoke with a semi-serious, semi-jesting air that made Gazonal shudder.

“So,” he said, “there’s to be no more religion?”

“No more religion of the State,” replied the pedicure, emphasizing the last words; “every man will have his own. It is very fortunate that the government is just now endowing convents; they’ll provide our funds. Everything, you see, conspires in our favour. Those who pity the peoples, who clamor on behalf of proletaries, who write works against the Jesuits, who busy themselves about the amelioration of no matter what,--the communists, the humanitarians, the philanthropists, you understand,--all these people are our advanced guard. While we are storing gunpowder, they are making the tinder which the spark of a single circumstance will ignite.”

“But what do you expect will make the happiness of France?” cried Gazonal.

“Equality of citizens and cheapness of provisions. We mean that there will be no persons lacking anything, no millionaires, no suckers of blood and victims.”

“That’s it!--maximum and minimum,” said Gazonal.

“You’ve said it,” replied the corn-cutter, decisively.