iou.

"Paris begins to confound me," said Gazonal.

"To make you see its immensity,--moral, political, and literary,--we are
now proceeding like the Roman cicerone, who shows you in Saint Peter's
the thumb of the statue you took to be life-size, and the thumb proves
to be a foot long. You haven't yet measured so much as a great toe of
Paris."

"And remark, cousin Gazonal, that we take things as they come; we
haven't selected."

"This evening you shall sup as they feasted at Belshazzar's; and there
you shall see our Paris, our own particular Paris, playing lansquenet,
and risking a hundred thousand francs at a throw without winking."

A quarter of an hour later the citadine stopped at the foot of the
steps going up to the Chamber of Deputies, at that end of the Pont de la
Concorde which leads to discord.

"I thought the Chamber unapproachable?" said the provincial, surprised
to find himself in the great lobby.

"That depends," replied Bixiou; "materially speaking, it costs thirty
sous for a citadine to approach it; politically, you have to spend
rather more. The swallows thought, so a poet says, that the Arc de
Triomphe was erected for them; we artists think that this public
building was built for us,--to compensate for the stupidities of the
Theatre-Francais and make us laugh; but the comedians on this stage are
much more expensive; and they don't give us every day the value of our
money."

"So this is the Chamber!" cried Gazonal, as he paced the great hall in
which there were then about a dozen persons, and looked around him with
an air which Bixiou noted down in his memory and reproduced in one of
the famous caricatures with which he rivalled Gavarni.

Leon went to speak to one of the ushers who go and come continually
between this hall and the hall of sessions, with which it communicates
by a passage in which are stationed the stenographers of the "Moniteur"
and persons attached to the Chamber.

"As for the minister," replied the usher to Leon as Gazonal approached
them, "he is there, but I don't know if Monsieur Giraud has come. I'll
see."

As the usher opened one side of the double door through which none but
deputies, ministers, or messengers from the king are allowed to pass,
Gazonal saw a man come out who seemed still young, although he was
really forty-eight years old, and to whom the usher evidently indicated
Leon de Lora.

"Ha! you here!" he exclaimed, shaking hands with both Bixiou and Lora.