confided to him that the said report would assuredly
be against him, and his own lawyer confirmed the statement. Gazonal,
though commander of the National Guard in his own town and one of the
most capable manufacturers of the department, found himself of so little
account in Paris, and he was, moreover, so frightened by the costs of
living and the dearness of even the most trifling things, that he kept
himself, all this time, secluded in his shabby lodgings. The Southerner,
deprived of his sun, execrated Paris, which he called a manufactory
of rheumatism. As he added up the costs of his suit and his living,
he vowed within himself to poison the prefect on his return, or to
minotaurize him. In his moments of deepest sadness he killed the prefect
outright; in gayer mood he contented himself with minotaurizing him.

One morning as he ate his breakfast and cursed his fate, he picked up
a newspaper savagely. The following lines, ending an article, struck
Gazonal as if the mysterious voice which speaks to gamblers before they
win had sounded in his ear: "Our celebrated landscape painter, Leon de
Lora, lately returned from Italy, will exhibit several pictures at the
Salon; thus the exhibition promises, as we see, to be most brilliant."
With the suddenness of action that distinguishes the sons of the sunny
South, Gazonal sprang from his lodgings to the street, from the street
to a street-cab, and drove to the rue de Berlin to find his cousin.

Leon de Lora sent word by a servant to his cousin Gazonal that he
invited him to breakfast the next day at the Cafe de Paris, but he was
now engaged in a matter which did not allow him to receive his cousin at
the present moment. Gazonal, like a true Southerner, recounted all his
troubles to the valet.

The next day at ten o'clock, Gazonal, much too well-dressed for the
occasion (he had put on his bottle-blue coat with brass buttons,
a frilled shirt, a white waistcoat and yellow gloves), awaited his
amphitryon a full hour, stamping his feet on the boulevard, after
hearing from the master of the cafe that "these gentlemen" breakfasted
habitually between eleven and twelve o'clock.

"Between eleven and half-past," he said when he related his adventures
to his cronies in the provinces, "two Parisians dressed in simple
frock-coats, looking like _nothing at all_, called out when they saw me
on the boulevard, 'There's our Gazonal!'"

The speaker was Bixiou, with whom Leon de Lora had armed