ead of two; 'Let
us be friends, Cinna!' hand over your colossal cabbages,--made to trick
the public like a gardener's catalogue. If I refused you it was because
it is pretty hard on a man who can only do his poor little business by
turning over his money, to have to keep your Ravenouillet notes in the
drawer of his desk. Hard, hard, very hard!"

"What discount do you want?" asked Bixiou.

"Next to nothing," returned Vauvinet. "It will cost you a miserable
fifty francs at the end of the quarter."

"As Emile Blondet used to say, you shall be my benefactor," replied
Bixiou.

"Twenty per cent!" whispered Gazonal to Bixiou, who replied by a punch
of his elbow in the provincial's oesophagus.

"Bless me!" said Vauvinet opening a drawer in his desk as if to put away
the Ravenouillet notes, "here's an old bill of five hundred francs stuck
in the drawer! I didn't know I was so rich. And here's a note payable
at the end of the month for four hundred and fifty; Cerizet will take it
without much diminution, and there's your sum in hand. But no nonsense,
Bixiou! Hein? to-night, at Carabine's, will you swear to me--"

"Haven't we _re_-friended?" said Bixiou, pocketing the
five-hundred-franc bill and the note for four hundred and fifty. "I give
you my word of honor that you shall see du Tillet, and many other men
who want to make their way--their railway--to-night at Carabine's."

Vauvinet conducted the three friends to the landing of the staircase,
cajoling Bixiou on the way. Bixiou kept a grave face till he reached the
outer door, listening to Gazonal, who tried to enlighten him on his late
operation, and to prove to him that if Vauvinet's follower, Cerizet,
took another twenty francs out of his four hundred and fifty, he was
getting money at forty per cent.

When they reached the asphalt Bixiou frightened Gazonal by the laugh of
a Parisian hoaxer,--that cold, mute laugh, a sort of labial north wind.

"The assignment of the contract for that railway is adjourned,
positively, by the Chamber; I heard this yesterday from that marcheuse
whom we smiled at just now. If I win five or six thousand francs at
lansquenet to-night, why should I grudge sixty-five francs for the power
to stake, hey?"

"Lansquenet is another of the thousand facets of Paris as it is," said
Leon. "And therefore, cousin, I intend to present you to-night in the
salon of a duchess,--a duchess of the rue Saint-Georges, where you will
see the aristocracy of th