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Let us discuss, in the first instance, Monsieur Bixiou's grand disapprobation just as we used to talk in the olden time of the grand treachery of Monsieur de Mirabeau. I'll describe that man to you in a single word. Envy.
As for Signora Luigia, dressed in black, which was customary with her, and having had the good sense to reject the services of a coiffeur, she was royally beautiful. An air of melancholy gravity, expressed by her whole person, inspired a sentiment of respect which surprised the men who on Bixiou's invitation were there to judge of her.
He bore Bixiou's jests as a busy man bears the buzzing of an insect; he was not even annoyed by them. In spite of his cleverness, Bixiou never perceived the profound contempt which Minard felt for him. Minard never dreamed of quarrelling, however, regarding it as a loss of time. After a while his composure tired out his tormentor. He always breakfasted with his wife, and ate nothing at the office.
The pantomime and the gestures that accompanied Bixiou's changes of voice, as he acted the parts of the various persons, must have been perfect, judging by the applause and admiring comments that broke from his audience of three. "Then did Rastignac refuse?" asked Blondet, apparently addressing Finot. "Point-blank." "But did you threaten him with the newspapers?" asked Bixiou.
"He is the right arm of the commercial police," said Gaillard in Bixiou's ear, "but you can never find out who pays him most, the debtor or the creditor." "The more rascally a business is, the more honor it needs. I'm for him who pays me best," continued Fromenteau addressing Gaillard. "You want to recover fifty thousand francs and you talk farthings to your means of action.
I have been hunting for it ever since the accession of His Majesty to the thrones of France and of Navarre. Last night I succeeded! but with what labor! Madame Colleville asked me what was the matter." Dutocq. "Do you think we have time to bother ourselves with your intolerable anagrams when the worthy Monsieur de la Billardiere has just expired?" Colleville. "That's Bixiou's nonsense!
"So I see, monsieur," returned Madame Nourrisson. "We have several things to sell," said the illustrious 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.
The apparition put you in mind of the Commandant's statue in Don Juan, it walked along, jerkily by fits and starts, in an awkward fashion invented in London, and cultivated in every family with patriotic care. "An Englishwoman!" he continued for Bixiou's ear. "An Englishwoman is our Waterloo. There are women who slip through our fingers like eels; we catch them on the staircase.
Being convinced that a certain amount of noisy discussion would advance my political career, I looked about me for what I may call a public crier. Among these circus trumpets, if I could have found one with a sharper tone, a more deafening blare than Bixiou's, I would have chosen it.
A set of Bixiou's drawings to illustrate life in the debtors' prison, led the conversation to take this particular turn; and from debtors' prisons they went to debts. It was midnight.
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