Unconscious Comedians Part 3

He took up a hat, low-crowned and wide-brimmed.

"This," he continued, "is the old hat of Claude Vignon, a great critic, in the days when he was a free man and a free-liver. He has lately come round to the ministry; they've made him a professor, a librarian; he writes now for the Debats only; they've appointed him Master of Pet.i.tions with a salary of sixteen thousand francs; he earns four thousand more out of his paper, and he is decorated. Well, now see his new hat."

And Vital showed them a hat of a form and design which was truly expressive of the juste-milieu.

"You ought to have made him a Punch and Judy hat!" cried Gazonal.

"You are a man of genius, Monsieur Vital," said Leon.

Vital bowed.

"Would you kindly tell me why the shops of your trade in Paris remain open late at night,--later than the cafes and the wineshops? That fact puzzles me very much," said Gazonal.

"In the first place, our shops are much finer when lighted up than they are in the daytime; next, where we sell ten hats in the daytime we sell fifty at night."

"Everything is queer in Paris," said Leon.

"Thanks to my efforts and my successes," said Vital, returning to the course of his self-laudation, "we are coming to hats with round headpieces. It is to that I tend!"

"What obstacle is there?" asked Gazonal.

"Cheapness, monsieur. In the first place, very handsome silk hats can be built for fifteen francs, which kills our business; for in Paris no one ever has fifteen francs in his pocket to spend on a hat. If a beaver hat costs thirty, it is still the same thing--When I say beaver, I ought to state that there are not ten pounds of beaver skins left in France. That article is worth three hundred and fifty francs a pound, and it takes an ounce for a hat. Besides, a beaver hat isn't really worth anything; the skin takes a wretched dye; gets rusty in ten minutes under the sun, and heat puts it out of shape as well. What we call 'beaver' in the trade is neither more nor less than hare's-skin. The best qualities are made from the back of the animal, the second from the sides, the third from the belly. I confide to you these trade secrets because you are men of honor. But whether a man has hare's-skin or silk on his head, fifteen or thirty francs in short, the problem is always insoluble. Hats must be paid for in cash, and that is why the hat remains what it is. The honor of vestural France will be saved on the day that gray hats with round crowns can be made to cost a hundred francs. We could then, like the tailors, give credit. To reach that result men must resolve to wear buckles, gold lace, plumes, and the brims lined with satin, as in the days of Louis XIII. and Louis XIV. Our business, which would then enter the domain of fancy, would increase tenfold. The markets of the world should belong to France; Paris will forever give the tone to women's fas.h.i.+ons, and yet the hats which all Frenchmen wear to-day are made in every country on earth! There are ten millions of foreign money to be gained annually for France in that question--"

"A revolution!" cried Bixiou, pretending enthusiasm.

"Yes, and a radical one; for the form must be changed."

"You are happy after the manner of Luther in dreaming of reform," said Leon.

"Yes, monsieur. Ah! if a dozen or fifteen artists, capitalists, or dandies who set the tone would only have courage for twenty-four hours France would gain a splendid commercial battle! To succeed in this reform I would give my whole fortune! Yes, my sole ambition is to regenerate the hat and disappear."

"The man is colossal," said Gazonal, as they left the shop; "but I a.s.sure you that all your originals so far have a touch of the Southerner about them."

"Let us go this way," said Bixiou pointing to the rue Saint-Marc.

"Do you want to show me something else?"

"Yes; you shall see the usuress of rats, marcheuses and great ladies,--a woman who possesses more terrible secrets than there are gowns hanging in her window," said Bixiou.

And he showed Gazonal one of those untidy shops which made an ugly stain in the midst of the dazzling show-windows of modern retail commerce.

This shop had a front painted in 1820, which some bankrupt had doubtless left in a dilapidated condition. The color had disappeared beneath a double coating of dirt, the result of usage, and a thick layer of dust; the window-panes were filthy, the door-k.n.o.b turned of itself, as door-k.n.o.bs do in all places where people go out more quickly than they enter.

"What do you say of _that_? First cousin to Death, isn't she?" said Leon in Gazonal's ear, showing him, at the desk, a terrible individual.

"Well, she calls herself Madame Nourrisson."

"Madame, how much is this guipure?" asked the manufacturer, intending to compete in liveliness with the two artists.

"To you, monsieur, who come from the country, it will be only three hundred francs," she replied. Then, remarking in his manner a sort of eagerness peculiar to Southerners, she added, in a grieved tone, "It formerly belonged to that poor Princess de Lamballe."

"What! do you dare exhibit it so near the palace?" cried Bixiou.

"Monsieur, _they_ don't believe in it," she replied.

"Madame, we have not come to make purchases," said Bixiou, with a show of frankness.

"So I see, monsieur," returned Madame Nourrisson.

"We have several things to sell," said the ill.u.s.trious caricaturist.

"I live close by, rue de Richelieu, 112, sixth floor. If you will come round there for a moment, you may perhaps make some good bargains."

Ten minutes later Madame Nourrisson did in fact present herself at Bixiou's lodgings, where by that time he had taken Leon and Gazonal.

Madame Nourrisson found them all three as serious as authors whose collaboration does not meet with the success it deserves.

"Madame," said the intrepid hoaxer, showing her a pair of women's slippers, "these belonged formerly to the Empress Josephine."

He felt it inc.u.mbent on him to return change for the Prince de Lamballe.

"Those!" she exclaimed; "they were made this year; look at the mark."

"Don't you perceive that the slippers are only by way of preface?" said Leon; "though, to be sure, they are usually the conclusion of a tale."

"My friend here," said Bixiou, motioning to Gazonal, "has an immense family interest in ascertaining whether a young lady of a good and wealthy house, whom he wishes to marry, has ever gone wrong."

"How much will monsieur give for the information," she asked, looking at Gazonal, who was no longer surprised by anything.

"One hundred francs," he said.

"No, thank you!" she said with a grimace of refusal worthy of a macaw.

"Then say how much you want, my little Madame Nourrisson," cried Bixiou catching her round the waist.

"In the first place, my dear gentlemen, I have never, since I've been in the business, found man or woman to haggle over happiness. Besides," she said, letting a cold smile flicker on her lips, and enforcing it by an icy glance full of catlike distrust, "if it doesn't concern your happiness, it concerns your fortune; and at the height where I find you lodging no man haggles over a 'dot'--Come," she said, "out with it! What is it you want to know, my lambs?"

"About the Beunier family," replied Bixiou, very glad to find out something in this indirect manner about persons in whom he was interested.

"Oh! as for that," she said, "one louis is quite enough."

"Why?"

"Because I hold all the mother's jewels and she's on tenter-hooks every three months, I can tell you! It is hard work for her to pay the interest on what I've lent her. Do you want to marry there, simpleton?"

she added, addressing Gazonal; "then pay me forty francs and I'll talk four hundred worth."

Gazonal produced a forty-franc gold-piece, and Madame Nourrisson gave him startling details as to the secret penury of certain so-called fas.h.i.+onable women. This dealer in cast-off clothes, getting lively as she talked, pictured herself unconsciously while telling of others.

Without betraying a single name or any secret, she made the three men shudder by proving to them how little so-called happiness existed in Paris that did not rest on the vacillating foundation of borrowed money. She possessed, laid away in her drawers, the secrets of departed grandmothers, living children, deceased husbands, dead granddaughters,--memories set in gold and diamonds. She learned appalling stories by making her clients talk of one another; tearing their secrets from them in moments of pa.s.sion, of quarrels, of anger, and during those cooler negotiations which need a loan to settle difficulties.

"Why were you ever induced to take up such a business?" asked Gazonal.

"For my son's sake," she said naively.