erizet, living in the midst of dreadful misery, behaved with the
calmness of undertakers in presence of afflicted heirs, of old sergeants
of the Guard among heaps of dead. They no more shuddered on hearing
cries of hunger and despair than surgeons shudder at the cries of their
patients in hospital; they said, as the soldiers and the dressers said,
the perfunctory words, "Have patience! a little courage! What's the good
of grieving? Suppose you kill yourself, what then? One gets accustomed
to everything; be reasonable!"

Though Cerizet took the precaution to hide the money necessary for his
morning operations in the hollow seat of the chair in which he sat,
taking out no more than a hundred francs at a time, which he put in
the pockets of his trousers, never dipping into the funds of the chair
except between the entrance of two batches of clients (keeping his door
locked and not opening it till all was safely stowed in his pockets), he
had really nothing to fear from the various despairs which found their
way from all sides to this rendezvous of misery. Certainly, there are
many different ways of being honest and virtuous; and the "Monograph of
Virtue" has no other basis than this social axiom.[*] A man is false
to his conscience; he fails, apparently, in delicacy; he forfeits
that bloom of honor which, though lost, does not, as yet, mean general
disrepute; at last, however, he fails decidedly in honor; if he falls
into the hands of the correctional police, he is not, as yet, guilty of
crime before the court of assizes; but after he is branded with infamy
by the verdict of a jury he may still be honored at the galleys for the
species of honor and integrity practised by criminals among themselves,
which consists in not betraying each other, in sharing booty loyally,
and in running all dangers. Well, this last form of honor--which is
perhaps a calculation, a necessity, the practice of which offers certain
opportunities for grandeur to the guilty man and the possibility of
a return to good--reigned absolutely between Cerizet and his clients.
Never did Cerizet make an error, nor his poor people either; neither
side ever denied what was due, either capital or interests. Many a
time Cerizet, who was born among the people, corrected from one week
to another some accidental error, to the benefit of a poor man who had
never discovered it. He was called a Jew, but an honest one, and his
word in that city of sorrows was sacred. A wo