himself to
"bring out" his provincial cousin, in other words, to make him pose.

"'Don't be vexed, cousin, I'm at your service!' cried out that little
Leon, taking me in his arms," related Gazonal on his return home. "The
breakfast was splendid. I thought I was going blind when I saw the
number of bits of gold it took to pay that bill. Those fellows must
earn their weight in gold, for I saw my cousin give the waiter _thirty
sous_--the price of a whole day's work!"

During this monstrous breakfast--advisedly so called in view of six
dozen Osten oysters, six cutlets a la Soubise, a chicken a la Marengo,
lobster mayonnaise, green peas, a mushroom pasty, washed down with
three bottles of Bordeaux, three bottles of Champagne, plus coffee and
liqueurs, to say nothing of relishes--Gazonal was magnificent in his
diatribes against Paris. The worthy manufacturer complained of the
length of the four-pound bread-loaves, the height of the houses, the
indifference of the passengers in the streets to one another, the cold,
the rain, the cost of hackney-coaches, all of which and much else he
bemoaned in so witty a manner that the two artists took a mighty fancy
to cousin Gazonal, and made him relate his lawsuit from beginning to
end.

"My lawsuit," he said in his Southern accent and rolling his r's, "is a
very simple thing; they want my manufactory. I've employed here in Paris
a dolt of a lawyer, to whom I give twenty francs every time he opens
an eye, and he is always asleep. He's a slug, who drives in his coach,
while I go afoot and he splashes me. I see now I ought to have had
a carriage! On the other hand, that Council of State are a pack of
do-nothings, who leave their duties to little scamps every one of
whom is bought up by our prefect. That's my lawsuit! They want my
manufactory! Well, they'll get it! and they must manage the best they
can with my workmen, a hundred of 'em, who'll make them sing another
tune before they've done with them."

"Two years. Ha! that meddling prefect! he shall pay dear for this; I'll
have his life if I have to give mine on the scaffold--"

"Which state councillor presides over your section?"

"A former newspaper man,--doesn't pay ten sous in taxes,--his name is
Massol."

The two Parisians exchanged glances.

"Who is the commissioner who is making the report?"

"Ha! that's still more queer; he's Master of Petitions, professor of
something or other at the Sorbonne,--a fellow who writes thing