and seize your hat, to
brush them; and they'll accompany you to the door of the salons to open
and shut it. I mention this, friend Gazonal," added Bixiou, slyly, "lest
you might think they were after your property, and cry 'Stop thief!'"

"These salons," said Leon, "are three boudoirs where the director
has collected all the inventions of modern luxury: lambrequins to the
windows, jardinieres everywhere, downy divans where each customer can
wait his turn and read the newspapers. You might suppose, when you
first go in, that five francs would be the least they'd get out of your
waistcoat pocket; but nothing is ever extracted beyond ten sous for
combing and frizzing your hair, or twenty sous for cutting and frizzing.
Elegant dressing-tables stand about among the jardinieres; water is
laid on to the washstands; enormous mirrors reproduce the whole figure.
Therefore don't look astonished. When the client (that's the elegant
word substituted by Marius for the ignoble word customer),--when the
client appears at the door, Marius gives him a glance which appraises
him: to Marius you are a _head_, more or less susceptible of occupying
his mind. To him there's no mankind; there are only heads."

"We let you hear Marius on all the notes of his scale," said Bixiou,
"and you know how to follow our lead."

As soon as Gazonal showed himself, the glance was given, and was
evidently favourable, for Marius exclaimed: "Regulus! yours this head!
Prepare it first with the little scissors."

"Excuse me," said Gazonal to the pupil, at a sign from Bixiou. "I prefer
to have my head dressed by Monsieur Marius himself."

Marius, much flattered by this demand, advanced, leaving the head on
which he was engaged.

"I am with you in a moment; I am just finishing. Pray have no
uneasiness, my pupil will prepare you; I alone will decide the cut."

Marius, a slim little man, his hair frizzed like that of Rubini, and jet
black, dressed also in black, with long white cuffs, and the frill of
his shirt adorned with a diamond, now saw Bixiou, to whom he bowed as to
a power the equal of his own.

"That is only an ordinary head," he said to Leon, pointing to the person
on whom he was operating,--"a grocer, or something of that kind. But if
we devoted ourselves to art only, we should lie in Bicetre, mad!" and
he turned back with an inimitable gesture to his client, after saying to
Regulus, "Prepare monsieur, he is evidently an artist."

"A journalist,