eover, the cat so despised
by Count Angles possessed the esteem of the republics of old. In their
eyes it was liberty incarnate; and as though to serve as pendant to
the Minerva Aptera of the Piraeus, there stood on the public square in
Corinth the colossal bronze figure of a cat. The ingenuous police of the
Restoration beheld the populace of Paris in too "rose-colored" a light;
it is not so much of "an amiable rabble" as it is thought. The Parisian
is to the Frenchman what the Athenian was to the Greek: no one sleeps
more soundly than he, no one is more frankly frivolous and lazy than
he, no one can better assume the air of forgetfulness; let him not be
trusted nevertheless; he is ready for any sort of cool deed; but when
there is glory at the end of it, he is worthy of admiration in every
sort of fury. Give him a pike, he will produce the 10th of August; give
him a gun, you will have Austerlitz. He is Napoleon's stay and Danton's
resource. Is it a question of country, he enlists; is it a question of
liberty, he tears up the pavements. Beware! his hair filled with wrath,
is epic; his blouse drapes itself like the folds of a chlamys. Take
care! he will make of the first Rue Grenetat which comes to hand Caudine
Forks. When the hour strikes, this man of the faubourgs will grow in
stature; this little man will arise, and his gaze will be terrible, and
his breath will become a tempest, and there will issue forth from that
slender chest enough wind to disarrange the folds of the Alps. It is,
thanks to the suburban man of Paris, that the Revolution, mixed with
arms, conquers Europe. He sings; it is his delight. Proportion his song
to his nature, and you will see! As long as he has for refrain nothing
but la Carmagnole, he only overthrows Louis XVI.; make him sing the
Marseillaise, and he will free the world.

This note jotted down on the margin of Angles' report, we will return to
our four couples. The dinner, as we have said, was drawing to its close.

CHAPTER VI--A CHAPTER IN WHICH THEY ADORE EACH OTHER

Chat at table, the chat of love; it is as impossible to reproduce one as
the other; the chat of love is a cloud; the chat at table is smoke.

Fameuil and Dahlia were humming. Tholomyes was drinking. Zephine was
laughing, Fantine smiling, Listolier blowing a wooden trumpet which he
had purchased at Saint-Cloud.

Favourite gazed tenderly at Blachevelle and said:--

"Blachevelle, I adore you."

This called forth a