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"Rabelais' quarter of an hour," said Ragon, smiling. "It was a fine ball," said Lourdois. "I am busy," said Cesar to the messengers; who all left the bills and went away. "Monsieur Grindot," said Lourdois, observing that the architect was folding up Birotteau's cheque, "will you certify my account? You need only to add it up; the prices were all agreed to by you on Monsieur Birotteau's behalf."
When this worthy couple were invited out, their hosts always put the dinner at the same hour, remembering that stomachs which were sixty-five years old could not adapt themselves to the novel hours recently adopted in the great world. Cesarine was sure that Madame Ragon would place her beside Anselme; for all women, be they fools or saints, know what is what in love.
"That is the headsman," answered M. Ragon, calling the executioner the executeur des hautes oeuvres by the name he had borne under the Monarchy. "Oh! my dear, my dear! M. l'Abbe is dying!" cried out old Madame Ragon. She caught up a flask of vinegar, and tried to restore the old priest to consciousness.
"Let me go on. Roguin is in it, and you tell me the business is worthless. Is that reasonable? You say, 'He is acting against the law. But he would put himself openly in the business if it were necessary. Can't they say the same of me? Would Ragon and Pillerault come and say to me: 'Why do you have to do with this affair, you who have made your money as a merchant?"
When asked how he knew certainly that it was John, he said that he knew him by his peculiar dress, its bright buttons, and the glimmer of gold braid on his cap. He said also, in a very decided manner, that John Sabay passed Ragon Torr so closely that he supposed they had spoken.
Madame Ragon, a tall woman, dry and wrinkled, with a pinched nose and thin lips, bore a spurious resemblance to a marquise of the old court. The circles round her eyes had spread to a wide circumference, like those of elderly women who have known sorrow. The severe and dignified, although affable, expression of her countenance inspired respect.
If I sail no more wi' Ragon, I must quit Peter's employ; for he loves Ragon as he loves no ither lad i' Stromness or Kirkwall. The Norse blood we think little o', Peter glories in; an' the twa men count thegither o'er their glasses the races o' the Vikings, an' their ain generations up to Snorro an' Thorso." "Is there no ither master but Peter Fae? ask theesel' that question, John."
He adopted this system and his implacable contempt for bankrupts from Monsieur Ragon, who in the course of his commercial life had seen such loss of time in litigation that he had come to look upon the meagre and uncertain dividends obtained by such compromises as fully counterbalanced by a better employment of the time spent in coming and going, in making proposals, or in listening to excuses for dishonesty.
This forced gaiety, through which an inextinguishable sense of the superiority which Birotteau attributed to himself was naively revealed, made Ragon shudder in spite of his seventy years. Cesar saw his wife passing down letters and papers for Popinot to sign; he could neither restrain his tears nor keep his face from turning pale. "Good-morning, my friend," she said to him, smiling.
Monsieur and Madame Ragon spoke to him like a dog. No one paid attention to his weariness, though many a night his feet, blistered by the pavements of Paris, and his bruised shoulders, made him suffer horribly. This harsh application of the maxim "each for himself," the gospel of large cities, made Cesar think the life of Paris very hard.
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