nd Alley, and put myself well forward. He
wants people to take up this new shape and make it
fashionable. He has already one order of some consequence."
"And, as for me, do you think my hair well done?" "Why, you
look like a very Adonis. By the way, _my_ hair is falling
off. Do give me something to stop that." "You must give it
nourishment. You see hairs are plants or flowers. If you
don't water a flower, you can see it withering." "Very true.
Then must I use pommade?" "Yes, but in moderation; just as a
tree too much watered stops growing. Hair is exactly like
vegetables." "And both want cutting?" "Why, yes; it's like a
plantation; if you don't prune and thin the branches it
kills the young shoots. Cutting helps the rise of the sap."
"Do you hold with false fronts?" "I believe you! Why, I make
them; it's just like putting a new roof on a house." "And
that does no harm to one's head?" "Impossible! neither glue
nor white of egg, which needs must hinder growth, are used.
People who wear them mix their own hair with the front. They
are two flocks, which unite to feed together, as M. Marty
says so well in the _Solitaire_."[41] "Two torrents which
join in the valley: that is the image of life!"

We had heard enough, and so we left the tailor's young man
and the romantic hairdresser to themselves.

[Sidenote: _Gustave._]

In _Gustave ou Le Mauvais Sujet_, a book still early but some years
later than _L'Enfant_, Paul de Kock got nearer to his proper or improper
subject--bachelor life in Paris, in the sense of his contemporary Pierce
Egan's _Life in London_.[42] The hero may be called a French Tom Jones
in something (but not so much as in the original phrase) of the sense in
which Klopstock was allowed to be a German Milton. He has his Allworthy
in a benevolent uncle-colonel, peppery but placable; he is far more
plentifully supplied than even Tom was with persons of the other sex who
play the parts of Black George's daughter and Mrs. Waters, if not
exactly of Lady Bellaston. A Sophia could hardly enter into the Kockian
plan, but her place in that scheme (with something, one regrets to add,
of Lady Bellaston's) is put in commission, and held by a leash of
amiable persons--the erring Madame de Berly, who sacrifices honour and
beauty and very nearly life for the rascal Gustave; Eugenie Fonbelle, a
rich, accomplished, an