venues of Purgatory, not one of all
these powers would induce him to transfer a single straw from one saucer
of his scales into the other. He is a judge, as Death is Death."

The two friends had reached the office of the Minister for Foreign
Affairs, at the corner of the Boulevard des Capucines.

"Here you are at home," said Bianchon, laughing, as he pointed to the
ministerial residence. "And here is my carriage," he added, calling a
hackney cab. "And these--express our fortune."

"You will be happy at the bottom of the sea, while I am still struggling
with the tempests on the surface, till I sink and go to ask you for a
corner in your grotto, old fellow!"

"Till Saturday," replied Bianchon.

"Agreed," said Rastignac. "And you promise me Popinot?"

"I will do all my conscience will allow. Perhaps this appeal for a
commission covers some little dramorama, to use a word of our good bad
times."

"Poor Bianchon! he will never be anything but a good fellow," said
Rastignac to himself as the cab drove off.

"Rastignac has given me the most difficult negotiation in the world,"
said Bianchon to himself, remembering, as he rose next morning, the
delicate commission intrusted to him. "However, I have never asked
the smallest service from my uncle in Court, and have paid more than a
thousand visits gratis for him. And, after all, we are not apt to mince
matters between ourselves. He will say Yes or No, and there an end."

After this little soliloquy the famous physician bent his steps, at
seven in the morning, towards the Rue du Fouarre, where dwelt Monsieur
Jean-Jules Popinot, judge of the Lower Court of the Department of
the Seine. The Rue du Fouarre--an old word meaning straw--was in the
thirteenth century the most important street in Paris. There stood the
Schools of the University, where the voices of Abelard and of Gerson
were heard in the world of learning. It is now one of the dirtiest
streets of the Twelfth Arrondissement, the poorest quarter of Paris,
that in which two-thirds of the population lack firing in winter, which
leaves most brats at the gate of the Foundling Hospital, which sends
most beggars to the poorhouse, most rag-pickers to the street corners,
most decrepit old folks to bask against the walls on which the sun
shines, most delinquents to the police courts.

Half-way down this street, which is always damp, and where the gutter
carries to the Seine the blackened waters from some dye-works, the