y a single button; his collar was
greasy; he kept his hat on his head as he spoke; he wore low shoes,
an open waistcoat gave glimpses of a homely shirt of coarse linen.
Good-nature was not wanting in the round countenance, with its two slits
of covetous eyes; but there was likewise the vague uneasiness habitual
to those who have money to spend and hear constant applications for
it. Yet, to all appearance, he was plain-dealing and easy-natured, his
business shrewdness was so well wadded round with fat. He had been an
assistant until he took a wretched little shop on the Quai des Augustins
two years since, and issued thence on his rounds among journalists,
authors, and printers, buying up free copies cheaply, making in such
ways some ten or twenty francs daily. Now, he had money saved; he
knew instinctively where every man was pressed; he had a keen eye for
business. If an author was in difficulties, he would discount a bill
given by a publisher at fifteen or twenty per cent; then the next day he
would go to the publisher, haggle over the price of some work in demand,
and pay him with his own bills instead of cash. Barbet was something of
a scholar; he had had just enough education to make him careful to steer
clear of modern poetry and modern romances. He had a liking for small
speculations, for books of a popular kind which might be bought outright
for a thousand francs and exploited at pleasure, such as the _Child's
History of France_, _Book-keeping in Twenty Lessons_, and _Botany for
Young Ladies_. Two or three times already he had allowed a good book to
slip through his fingers; the authors had come and gone a score of
times while he hesitated, and could not make up his mind to buy the
manuscript. When reproached for his pusillanimity, he was wont to
produce the account of a notorious trial taken from the newspapers; it
cost him nothing, and had brought him in two or three thousand francs.

Barbet was the type of bookseller that goes in fear and trembling; lives
on bread and walnuts; rarely puts his name to a bill; filches little
profits on invoices; makes deductions, and hawks his books about
himself; heaven only knows where they go, but he sells them somehow,
and gets paid for them. Barbet was the terror of printers, who could
not tell what to make of him; he paid cash and took off the discount;
he nibbled at their invoices whenever he thought they were pressed for
money; and when he had fleeced a man once, he never