ful uncertainty
to the rents. The lion had hardly three francs a day left for food,
amusements, and gambling. He very often dined out, and breakfasted with
remarkable frugality. When he was positively obliged to dine at his own
cost, he sent his tiger to fetch a couple of dishes from a cookshop,
never spending more than twenty-five sous.

Young Monsieur de Soulas was supposed to be a spendthrift, recklessly
extravagant, whereas the poor man made the two ends meet in the year
with a keenness and skill which would have done honor to a thrifty
housewife. At Besancon in those days no one knew how great a tax on a
man's capital were six francs spent in polish to spread on his boots
or shoes, yellow gloves at fifty sous a pair, cleaned in the deepest
secrecy to make them three times renewed, cravats costing ten francs,
and lasting three months, four waistcoats at twenty-five francs, and
trousers fitting close to the boots. How could he do otherwise, since we
see women in Paris bestowing their special attention on simpletons
who visit them, and cut out the most remarkable men by means of these
frivolous advantages, which a man can buy for fifteen louis, and get his
hair curled and a fine linen shirt into the bargain?

If this unhappy youth should seem to you to have become a _lion_ on very
cheap terms, you must know that Amedee de Soulas had been three times to
Switzerland, by coach and in short stages, twice to Paris, and once from
Paris to England. He passed as a well-informed traveler, and could say,
"In England, where I went..." The dowagers of the town would say to him,
"You, who have been in England..." He had been as far as Lombardy, and
seen the shores of the Italian lakes. He read new books. Finally,
when he was cleaning his gloves, the tiger Babylas replied to callers,
"Monsieur is very busy." An attempt had been made to withdraw Monsieur
Amedee de Soulas from circulation by pronouncing him "A man of advanced
ideas." Amedee had the gift of uttering with the gravity of a native the
commonplaces that were in fashion, which gave him the credit of being
one of the most enlightened of the nobility. His person was garnished
with fashionable trinkets, and his head furnished with ideas hall-marked
by the press.

In 1834 Amedee was a young man of five-and-twenty, of medium height,
dark, with a very prominent thorax, well-made shoulders, rather plump
legs, feet already fat, white dimpled hands, a beard under his chin,
moust