and walked well, with the arrogant look of a dandy; her toilet was
remarkable for its ruinous simplicity.

"That is Carabine," said Bixiou, who gave her, as did Leon, a slight nod
to which she responded by a smile.

"There's another who may possibly get your prefect turned out."

"A marcheuse!--but what is that?"

"A marcheuse is a rat of great beauty whom her mother, real or
fictitious, has sold as soon as it was clear she would become neither
first, second, nor third danseuse, but who prefers the occupation of
coryphee to any other, for the main reason that having spent her youth
in that employment she is unfitted for any other. She has been rejected
at the minor theatres where they want danseuses; she has not succeeded
in the three towns where ballets are given; she has not had the money,
or perhaps the desire to go to foreign countries--for perhaps you don't
know that the great school of dancing in Paris supplies the whole world
with male and female dancers. Thus a rat who becomes a marcheuse,--that
is to say, an ordinary figurante in a ballet,--must have some solid
attachment which keeps her in Paris: either a rich man she does not love
or a poor man she loves too well. The one you have just seen pass will
probably dress and redress three times this evening,--as a princess,
a peasant-girl, a Tyrolese; by which she will earn about two hundred
francs a month."

"She is better dressed than my prefect's wife."

"If you should go to her house," said Bixiou, "you would find there a
chamber-maid, a cook, and a man-servant. She occupies a fine apartment
in the rue Saint-Georges; in short, she is, in proportion to French
fortunes of the present day compared with those of former times, a relic
of the eighteenth century 'opera-girl.' Carabine is a power; at this
moment she governs du Tillet, a banker who is very influential in the
Chamber of Deputies."

"And above these two rounds in the ballet ladder what comes next?" asked
Gazonal.

"Look!" said his cousin, pointing to an elegant caleche which was
turning at that moment from the boulevard into the rue Grange-Bateliere,
"there's one of the leading danseuses whose name on the posters attracts
all Paris. That woman earns sixty thousand francs a year and lives like
a princess; the price of your manufactory all told wouldn't suffice to
buy you the privilege of bidding her good-morning a dozen times."

"Do you see," said Bixiou, "that young man who is sitting on the fr