longer merely
an adventurer stuffed with gold, exciting the stupid admiration of
the crowd, as might an enormous rough nugget in the window of a
money-changer, but that people saw in him, as he passed, one of the
men elected by the will of the nation, his simple and mobile face grew
thoughtful with a deliberate gravity, there suggested themselves to him
projects of a career, of reform, and the wish to profit by the lessons
that had been latterly taught by destiny. Already, remembering the
promise which he had given to de Gery, for the household troop that
wriggled ignobly at his heels, he made exhibition of certain disdainful
coldnesses, a deliberate pose of authoritative contradiction. He called
the Marquis de Bois l'Hery "my good fellow," imposed silence very
sharply on the governor, whose enthusiasm was becoming scandalous, and
made a solemn vow to himself to get rid as soon as possible of all that
mendicant and promising Bohemian set, when he should have occasion to
begin the process.

Penetrating the crowd which surrounded him, Moessard--the handsome
Moessard, in a sky-blue cravat, pale and bloated like a white embodiment
of disease, and pinched at the waist in a fine frock-coat--seeing that
the Nabob, after having gone twenty times round the hall of sculpture,
was making for the door, dashed forward, and passing his arm through
his, said:

"You are taking me with you, you know."

Especially of late, since the time of the election, he had assumed, in
the establishment of the Place Vendome, an authority almost equal to
that of Monpavon, but more impudent; for, in point of impudence, the
Queen's lover was without his equal on the pavement that stretches from
the Rue Drouot to the Madeleine. This time he had gone too far. The
muscular arm which he pressed was shaken violently, and the Nabob
answered very dryly:

"I am sorry, _mon cher_, but I have not a place to offer you."

No place in a carriage that was as big as a house, and which five of
them had come in!

Moessard gazed at him in stupefaction.

"I had, however, a few words to say to you which are very urgent. With
regard to the subject of my note--you received it, did you not?"

"Certainly; and M. de Gery should have sent you a reply this very
morning. What you ask is impossible. Twenty thousand francs! _Tonnerre
de Dieu!_ You go at a fine rate!"

"Still, it seems to me that my services--" stammered the beauty-man.

"Have been amply paid for. That