thinking or caring of a time when the cord would
break. The liveliness of his wit and the prodigal flow of his ideas
made him acceptable to all persons who took pleasure in the lights of
intellect; but none of his friends liked him. Incapable of checking a
witty saying, he would scarify his two neighbors before a dinner was
half over. In spite of his skin-deep gayety, a secret dissatisfaction
with his social position could be detected in his speech; he aspired
to something better, but the fatal demon hiding in his wit hindered
him from acquiring the gravity which imposes on fools. He lived on the
second floor of a house in the rue de Ponthieu, where he had three rooms
delivered over to the untidiness of a bachelor's establishment, in fact,
a regular bivouac. He often talked of leaving France and seeking his
fortune in America. No wizard could foretell the future of this
young man in whom all talents were incomplete; who was incapable of
perseverance, intoxicated with pleasure, and who acted on the belief
that the world ended on the morrow.

In the matter of dress Bixiou had the merit of never being ridiculous;
he was perhaps the only official of the ministry whose dress did not
lead outsiders to say, "That man is a government clerk!" He wore elegant
boots with black trousers strapped under them, a fancy waistcoat,
a becoming blue coat, collars that were the never-ending gift of
grisettes, one of Bandoni's hats, and a pair of dark-colored kid gloves.
His walk and bearing, cavalier and simple both, were not without grace.
He knew all this, and when des Lupeaulx summoned him for a piece
of impertinence said and done about Monsieur de la Billardiere and
threatened him with dismissal, Bixiou replied, "You will take me back
because my clothes do credit to the ministry"; and des Lupeaulx,
unable to keep from laughing, let the matter pass. The most harmless of
Bixiou's jokes perpetrated among the clerks was the one he played off
upon Godard, presenting him with a butterfly just brought from China,
which the worthy man keeps in his collection and exhibits to this day,
blissfully unconscious that it is only painted paper. Bixiou had the
patience to work up the little masterpiece for the sole purpose of
hoaxing his superior.

The devil always puts a martyr near a Bixiou. Baudoyer's bureau held the
martyr, a poor copying-clerk twenty-two years of age, with a salary of
fifteen hundred francs, named Auguste-Jean-Francois Minard. Mi