ok him to the Opera
on gala days and presented him to some grisette under the clock, after
calling everybody's attention to the young fool. He allied himself with
Dutocq (whom he regarded as a solemn juggler) in his hatred to Rabourdin
and his praise of Baudoyer, and did his best to support him. Jean-Jaques
Bixiou was the grandson of a Parisian grocer. His father, who died
a colonel, left him to the care of his grandmother, who married her
head-clerk, named Descoings, after the death of her first husband, and
died in 1822. Finding himself without prospects on leaving college, he
attempted painting, but in spite of his intimacy with Joseph Bridau,
his life-long friend, he abandoned art to take up caricature, vignette
designing, and drawing for books, which twenty years later went by the
name of "illustration." The influence of the Ducs de Maufrigneuse and
de Rhetore, whom he knew in the society of actresses, procured him his
employment under government in 1819. On good terms with des Lupeaulx,
with whom in society he stood on an equality, and intimate with du
Bruel, he was a living proof of Rabourdin's theory as to the steady
deterioration of the administrative hierarchy in Paris through the
personal importance which a government official may acquire outside of
a government office. Short in stature but well-formed, with a delicate
face remarkable for its vague likeness to Napoleon's, thin lips, a
straight chin, chestnut whiskers, twenty-seven years old, fair-skinned,
with a piercing voice and sparkling eye,--such was Bixiou; a man, all
sense and all wit, who abandoned himself to a mad pursuit of pleasure of
every description, which threw him into a constant round of dissipation.
Hunter of grisettes, smoker, jester, diner-out and frequenter of
supper-parties, always tuned to the highest pitch, shining equally in
the greenroom and at the balls given among the grisettes of the Allee
des Veuves, he was just as surprisingly entertaining at table as at a
picnic, as gay and lively at midnight on the streets as in the morning
when he jumped out of bed, and yet at heart gloomy and melancholy, like
most of the great comic players.

Launched into the world of actors and actresses, writers, artists, and
certain women of uncertain means, he lived well, went to the theatre
without paying, gambled at Frascati, and often won. Artist by nature and
really profound, though by flashes only, he swayed to and fro in life
like a swing, without