t, out
of the Rue des Lombards--"

"That will do, Bixiou, enough; it is at an end. Be off!"

"Be off? I have a friend's privileges, and I shall take every advantage
of them.--What has come over you?"

"What has 'come over' me is my lady from Sancerre. She is a mother, and
we are going to live together happily to the end of our days.--You would
have heard it to-morrow, so you may as well be told it now."

"Many chimney-pots are falling on my head, as Arnal says. But if this
woman really loves you, my dear fellow, she will go back to the place
she came from. Did any provincial woman ever yet find her sea-legs
in Paris? She will wound all your vanities. Have you forgotten what a
provincial is? She will bore you as much when she is happy as when she
is sad; she will have as great a talent for escaping grace as a Parisian
has in inventing it.

"Lousteau, listen to me. That a passion should lead you to forget to
some extent the times in which we live, is conceivable; but I, my dear
fellow, have not the mythological bandage over my eyes.--Well, then
consider your position. For fifteen years you have been tossing in the
literary world; you are no longer young, you have padded the hoof till
your soles are worn through!--Yes, my boy, you turn your socks under
like a street urchin to hide the holes, so that the legs cover the
heels! In short, the joke is too stale. Your excuses are more familiar
than a patent medicine--"

"I may say to you, like the Regent to Cardinal Dubois, 'That is kicking
enough!'" said Lousteau, laughing.

"Oh, venerable young man," replied Bixiou, "the iron has touched the
sore to the quick. You are worn out, aren't you? Well, then; in the
heyday of youth, under the pressure of penury, what have you done? You
are not in the front rank, and you have not a thousand francs of your
own. That is the sum-total of the situation. Can you, in the decline of
your powers, support a family by your pen, when your wife, if she is an
honest woman, will not have at her command the resources of the woman
of the streets, who can extract her thousand-franc note from the depths
where milord keeps it safe? You are rushing into the lowest depths of
the social theatre.

"And this is only the financial side. Now, consider the political
position. We are struggling in an essentially _bourgeois_ age, in which
honor, virtue, high-mindedness, talent, learning--genius, in short, is
summed up in paying your way, owing nobody any