the vexed, scandalized
faces of the guests. What an intriguer was this Moessard! What an
impudent piece of sycophantry! And the same envious, disdainful smile
quivered on every mouth. And the deuce of it was that a man had to
applaud, to appear charmed, the master of the house not being weary as
yet of incense, and taking everything very seriously, both the article
and the applause it provoked. His big face shone during the reading.
Often, down yonder, far away, had he dreamed a dream of having his
praises sung like this in the newspapers of Paris, of being somebody
in that society, the first among all, on which the entire world has its
eyes fixed as on the bearer of a torch. Now, that dream was becoming
a reality. He gazed upon all these people seated at his board, the
sumptuous dessert, this panelled dining-room as high, certainly, as the
church of his native village; he listened to the dull murmur of Paris
rolling along in its carriages and treading the pavements beneath his
windows, with the intimate conviction that he was about to become
an important piece in that active and complicated machine. And then,
through the atmosphere of physical well-being produced by the meal,
between the lines of that triumphant vindication, by an effect of
contrast, he beheld unfold itself his own existence, his youth,
adventurous as it was sad, the days without bread, the nights without
shelter. Then suddenly, the reading having come to an end, his joy
overflowing in one of those southern effusions which force thought
into speech, he cried, beaming upon his guests with that frank and
thick-lipped smile of his:

"Ah, my friends, my dear friends, if you could know how happy I am! What
pride I feel!"

Scarce six weeks had passed since he had landed in France. Excepting two
or three compatriots, those whom he thus addressed as his friends were
but the acquaintances of a day, and that through his having lent
them money. This sudden expansion, therefore, appeared sufficiently
extraordinary; but Jansoulet, too much under the sway of emotion to
notice anything, continued:

"After what I have just heard, when I behold myself here in this
great Paris, surrounded by all its wealth of illustrious names, of
distinguished intellects, and then call up the remembrance of my
father's booth! For I was born in a booth. My father used to sell old
nails at the corner of a boundary stone in the Bourg-Saint-Andeol. If we
had bread in the house every da