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Do you know that I am called Florian Barbedienne, actual lieutenant to monsieur the provost, and, moreover, commissioner, inquisitor, controller, and examiner, with equal power in provostship, bailiwick, preservation, and inferior court of judicature? There is no reason why a deaf man talking to a deaf man should stop.

Certain dealers frankly sell a modern reproduction as modern and at an appropriate price, but I know of one only, M. Barbédienne, who puts a plaque with his initials on each piece produced by him. During Barye's lifetime he had, however, in his employ, a man named Henri, who possessed his confidence to a full degree.

However, at the moment when Master Florian Barbedienne was reading the sentence in his turn, before signing it, the clerk felt himself moved with pity for the poor wretch of a prisoner, and, in the hope of obtaining some mitigation of the penalty, he approached as near the auditor's ear as possible, and said, pointing to Quasimodo, "That man is deaf."

Let us allow that works of art marked by the artist's own touch the gates of Paradise by Ghiberti, a shield by Cellini, a statue by Michael Angelo, are better than all reproductions and imitations, better than plaster casts by Eichler, electrotypes by Barbedienne, or chromos by Prang.

Imagine, in fact, at the provost's table, leaning upon his elbows between two bundles of documents of cases, with his foot on the train of his robe of plain brown cloth, his face buried in his hood of white lamb's skin, of which his brows seemed to be of a piece, red, crabbed, winking, bearing majestically the load of fat on his cheeks which met under his chin, Master Florian Barbedienne, auditor of the Chatelet.

"We are late, my dear Q.M. This is not carnival time, remember. We jump early." The rooms were but I cannot be at the pains of describing them. The reader knows what Sévres and Aubusson, St. Gobain, Barbédienne, Fourdinois, Jeanseline, Tahan, and the rest, can do for a first floor within a stone's throw of the Boulevard des Italiens. The fashion in all its most striking aspects is here.

When shall I see our rector here? A hundred livres parisian, fine to the king! That Barbedienne strikes like a deaf man, as he is! I'll be my brother the archdeacon, if that keeps me from gaming; gaming by day, gaming by night, living at play, dying at play, and gaming away my soul after my shirt. Holy Virgin, what damsels! One after the other my lambs.

Ambroise Lecuyere, Isabeau la Paynette, Berarde Gironin! I know them all, by Heavens! A fine! a fine! That's what will teach you to wear gilded girdles! ten sous parisis! you coquettes! Oh! the old snout of a judge! deaf and imbecile! Oh! Florian the dolt! Oh! Barbedienne the blockhead! There he is at the table!

He had still to undergo that hour of pillory which Master Florian Barbedienne had so judiciously added to the sentence of Messire Robert d'Estouteville; all to the greater glory of the old physiological and psychological play upon words of Jean de Cumene, Surdus absurdus: a deaf man is absurd.

His lieutenants, civil, criminal, and private, were doing his work, according to usage; and from eight o'clock in the morning, some scores of bourgeois and bourgeoises, heaped and crowded into an obscure corner of the audience chamber of Embas du Chatelet, between a stout oaken barrier and the wall, had been gazing blissfully at the varied and cheerful spectacle of civil and criminal justice dispensed by Master Florian Barbedienne, auditor of the Chatelet, lieutenant of monsieur the provost, in a somewhat confused and utterly haphazard manner.