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Updated: June 27, 2025
Ten minutes later he also, thanks to the kind offices of M. Polperro, and by the payment of twenty francs, found himself a member of the Club; free of that inner sanctuary where the devotees of the fickle goddess play with gold instead of silver; and where, as even Chester could see, the people who stood round the table, risking with quiet, calculating eyes their twenty-franc pieces and bank-notes, were of a very different social standing from the merry, careless crowd downstairs.
Beneath a parasol a lady's face stood out clearly from the moving maze around him her face again. The smile in her eyes made Paul mad. He thrust a twenty-franc note into the hand of the astonished cocher, and springing into the cab directed the man to hurry on. And then the impossibility of the situation dawned upon him.
Rad el Moussa nodded again, and made careful inspection of the coins, turning them one by one with his long brown fingers, and biting those he fancied most as a test of their quality. Finally, he selected a gold twenty-franc piece and two sovereigns, balanced and chinked them carefully in his hand, and then slipped them into some private receptacle in his wearing apparel.
To be sure, he would have asked himself with equal simplicity what was the difference between a twenty-franc piece, a napoleon, and a louis, or would have debated as to the precise numerical relation between twenty-five cents and a quarter of a dollar; but then, those are mere foreign coins, you see, which no fellow can be expected to understand, unless he happens to have lived in the country they are used in.
Moreover, he did not allow anything to worry him, but was perfectly willing that the young priest should pay his railway fare, and provide for him at the hotel yonder as for a child; and his daughter Blanche, having slipped a twenty-franc piece into his hand at the last moment, he had even thought himself rich again.
By some miracle the smiling lady does "compree," and produces white wine, red wine, candles, and a bottle of Benedictine! "Combine?" is the next observation. The épicière utters the series of short sharp sibilants of which all French numerals appear to be composed. It sounds like "song-song-song." The resourceful Goffin lays down a twenty-franc note. "Take it out of that," he says grandly.
There are Americans and plenty of them who will lose all they have in some magnificent scheme, and make much less fuss about it than a Paris shopkeeper would over a bad twenty-franc piece. "Our disabled young Croesus from the West is a luminous specimen of the type. The country would be less interesting without his kind, and, on the whole, less healthy for they provide one of the needed ferments.
At every house to which he goes the people follow my example, and show their esteem by asking him to dine with them. It is a feeling of pride that leads him to work, and it is only as a portrait of the Emperor that he can be induced to take my twenty-franc piece.
"True?" protested the bewildered giant: "You're going to cut your stick already?" "Call the governor!... There's a twenty-franc piece for you! Pay for your drinks and keep the rest," was Bobinette's effective reply. Hogshead calmed down at once.
"I have the honor to bid you good-morning, Monsieur le Baron," said Contenson, taking the twenty-franc piece. "I shall have the honor of calling again to tell Georges where you are to go this evening, for we never write anything in such cases when they are well managed." "It is funny how sharp dese rascals are!" said the Baron to himself; "it is de same mit de police as it is in buss'niss."
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