s in
reviews, and for whom I have the profoundest contempt."

"Claude Vignon," said Bixiou.

"Yes, that's his name," replied Gazonal. "Massol and Vignon--there you
have Social Reason, in which there's no reason at all."

"There must be some way out of it," said Leon de Lora. "You see, cousin,
all things are possible in Paris for good as well as for evil, for the
just as well as the unjust. There's nothing that can't be done, undone,
and redone."

"The devil take me if I stay ten days more in this hole of a place, the
dullest in all France!"

The two cousins and Bixiou were at this moment walking from one end to
the other of that sheet of asphalt on which, between the hours of one
and three, it is difficult to avoid seeing some of the personages in
honor of whom Fame puts one or the other of her trumpets to her lips.
Formerly that locality was the Place Royale; next it was the Pont Neuf;
in these days this privilege had been acquired by the Boulevard des
Italiens.

"Paris," said the painter to his cousin, "is an instrument on which we
must know how to play; if we stand here ten minutes I'll give you your
first lesson. There, look!" he said, raising his cane and pointing to a
couple who were just then coming out from the Passage de l'Opera.

"Goodness! who's that?" asked Gazonal.

_That_ was an old woman, in a bonnet which had spent six months in a
show-case, a very pretentious gown and a faded tartan shawl, whose face
had been buried twenty years of her life in a damp lodge, and whose
swollen hand-bag betokened no better social position than that of an
ex-portress. With her was a slim little girl, whose eyes, fringed with
black lashes, had lost their innocence and showed great weariness; her
face, of a pretty shape, was fresh and her hair abundant, her forehead
charming but audacious, her bust thin,--in other words, an unripe fruit.

"That," replied Bixiou, "is a rat tied to its mother."

"A rat!--what's that?"

"That particular rat," said Leon, with a friendly nod to Mademoiselle
Ninette, "may perhaps win your suit for you."

Gazonal bounded; but Bixiou had held him by the arm ever since they left
the cafe, thinking perhaps that the flush on his face was rather vivid.

"That rat, who is just leaving a rehearsal at the Opera-house, is going
home to eat a miserable dinner, and will return about three o'clock to
dress, if she dances in the ballet this evening--as she will, to-day
being Monday. This rat is a