e five great powers of the day, and he hasn't, in
the morning, the time to be polite. Now," continued Leon, speaking to
Bixiou, "if we are going to the Chamber to help him with his lawsuit let
us take the longest way round."

"Words said by great men are like silver-gilt spoons with the gilt
washed off; by dint of repetition they lose their brilliancy," said
Bixiou. "Where shall we go?"

"Here, close by, to our hatter?" replied Leon.

"Bravo!" cried Bixiou. "If we keep on in this way, we shall have an
amusing day of it."

"Gazonal," said Leon, "I shall make the man pose for you; but mind that
you keep a serious face, like the king on a five-franc piece, for you
are going to see a choice original, a man whose importance has turned
his head. In these days, my dear fellow, under our new political
dispensation, every human being tries to cover himself with glory,
and most of them cover themselves with ridicule; hence a lot of living
caricatures quite new to the world."

"If everybody gets glory, who can be famous?" said Gazonal.

"Fame! none but fools want that," replied Bixiou. "Your cousin wears the
cross, but I'm the better dressed of the two, and it is I whom people
are looking at."

After this remark, which may explain why orators and other great
statesmen no longer put the ribbon in their buttonholes when in Paris,
Leon showed Gazonal a sign, bearing, in golden letters, the illustrious
name of "Vital, successor to Finot, manufacturer of hats" (no longer
"hatter" as formerly), whose advertisements brought in more money to
the newspapers than those of any half-dozen vendors of pills or
sugarplums,--the author, moreover, of an essay on hats.

"My dear fellow," said Bixiou to Gazonal, pointing to the splendors of
the show-window, "Vital has forty thousand francs a year from invested
property."

"And he stays a hatter!" cried the Southerner, with a bound that almost
broke the arm which Bixiou had linked in his.

"You shall see the man," said Leon. "You need a hat and you shall have
one gratis."

"Is Monsieur Vital absent?" asked Bixiou, seeing no one behind the desk.

"Monsieur is correcting proof in his study," replied the head clerk.

"Hein! what style!" said Leon to his cousin; then he added, addressing
the clerk: "Could we speak to him without injury to his inspiration?"

"Let those gentlemen enter," said a voice.

It was a bourgeois voice, the voice of one eligible to the Chamber, a
powerful voice,