y of the nest. The father was
unable to give them that in any event; and then he was so busy!

A thousand matters, the _Caisse Territoriale_, the arrangement of
the picture gallery, races at Tattersall's with Bois-l'Hery, some
gimcrack to go and see, here or there, at the houses of collectors to
whom Schwalbach recommended him, hours passed with trainers, jockeys,
dealers in curiosities, the occupied, varied existence of a bourgeois
gentleman in modern Paris. In all this going and coming he succeeded in
Parisianizing himself a little more each day, was admitted to
Monpavon's club, made welcome in the green-room at the ballet, behind
the scenes at the theatre, and continued to preside at his famous
bachelor breakfasts, the only entertainments possible in his
establishment. His existence was really very full, and yet de Gery
relieved him from the most difficult part of it, the complicated
department of solicitations and contributions.

The young man was now a witness, as he sat at his desk, of all the
audacious and burlesque inventions, all the heroi-comic schemes of that
mendicancy of a great city, organized like a ministerial department and
in numbers like an army, which subscribes to the newspapers and knows
its _Bottin_ by heart. It was his business to receive the fair-haired
lady, young, brazen-faced and already faded, who asks for only a
hundred louis, threatening to throw herself into the water immediately
upon leaving the house if they are not forthcoming, and the stout
matron, with affable, unceremonious manners, who says on entering the
room: "Monsieur, you do not know me. Nor have I the honor of knowing
you; but we shall soon know each other. Be kind enough to sit down and
let us talk." The tradesman in difficulties, on the brink of
insolvency--it is sometimes true--who comes to entreat you to save his
honor, with a pistol all ready for suicide bulging out the pocket of
his coat--sometimes it is only the bowl of his pipe. And oftentimes
cases of genuine distress, prolix and tiresome, of people who do not
even know how to tell how unfitted they are to earn their living.
Besides such instances of avowed mendicancy, there were others in
disguise: charity, philanthropy, good works, encouragement of artists,
house-to-house collections for children's hospitals, parish churches,
penitentiaries, benevolent societies or district libraries. And lastly
those that array themselves in a worldly mask: tickets to concerts,