Normandy, "getting out of a thing as best you can." He spared
no one; and his liveliness increased with the torrents of wine which
poured down his throat like rain through a gutter.

"Do you know, La Briere," said Canalis, filling Butscha's glass, "that
this fellow would make a capital secretary to the embassy?"

"And oust his chief!" cried the dwarf flinging a look at Canalis whose
insolence was lost in the gurgling of carbonic acid gas. "I've little
enough gratitude and quite enough scheming to get astride of your
shoulders. Ha, ha, a poet carrying a hunchback! that's been seen, often
seen--on book-shelves. Come, don't look at me as if I were swallowing
swords. My dear great genius, you're a superior man; you know that
gratitude is the word of fools; they stick it in the dictionary, but it
isn't in the human heart; pledges are worth nothing, except on a certain
mount that is neither Pindus nor Parnassus. You think I owe a great deal
to my master's wife, who brought me up. Bless you, the whole town has
paid her for that in praises, respect, and admiration,--the very best
of coin. I don't recognize any service that is only the capital of
self-love. Men make a commerce of their services, and gratitude
goes down on the debit side,--that's all. As to schemes, they are my
divinity. What?" he exclaimed, at a gesture of Canalis, "don't you
admire the faculty which enables a wily man to get the better of a
man of genius? it takes the closest observation of his vices, and his
weaknesses, and the wit to seize the happy moment. Ask diplomacy if
its greatest triumphs are not those of craft over force? If I were your
secretary, Monsieur le baron, you'd soon be prime-minister, because
it would be my interest to have you so. Do you want a specimen of my
talents in that line? Well then, listen; you love Mademoiselle Modeste
distractedly, and you've good reason to do so. The girl has my fullest
esteem; she is a true Parisian. Sometimes we get a few real Parisians
born down here in the provinces. Well, Modeste is just the woman to help
a man's career. She's got _that_ in her," he cried, with a turn of his
wrist in the air. "But you've a dangerous competitor in the duke; what
will you give me to get him out of Havre within three days?"

"Finish this bottle," said the poet, refilling Butscha's glass.

"You'll make me drunk," said the dwarf, tossing off his ninth glass of
champagne. "Have you a bed where I could sleep it off? My master