talents."

Birotteau might easily believe himself a superior being in the presence
of Monsieur Molineux; the answer of the umbrella-man made him smile
agreeably, and he bowed to him with a truly royal air as they parted.

"I am close by the Markets," thought Cesar; "I'll attend to the matter
of the nuts."

* * * * *

After an hour's search, Birotteau, who was sent by the market-women to
the Rue de Lombards where nuts for sugarplums were to be found, heard
from his friend Matifat that the fruit in bulk was only to be had of a
certain Madame Angelique Madou, living in the Rue Perrin-Gasselin, the
sole establishment which kept the true filbert of Provence, and the
veritable white hazel-nut of the Alps.

The Rue Perrin-Gasselin is one of the narrow thoroughfares in a square
labyrinth enclosed by the quay, the Rue Saint-Denis, the Rue de la
Ferronnerie, and the Rue de la Monnaie; it is, as it were, one of the
entrails of the city. There swarm an infinite number of heterogeneous
and mixed articles of merchandise, evil-smelling and jaunty, herrings
and muslin, silks and honey, butter and gauze, and above all a number of
petty trades, of which Paris knows as little as a man knows of what
is going on in his pancreas, and which, at the present moment, had a
blood-sucker named Bidault, otherwise called Gigonnet, a money-lender,
who lived in the Rue Grenetat. In this quarter old stables were filled
with oil-casks, and the carriage-houses were packed with bales of
cotton. Here were stored in bulk the articles that were sold at retail
in the markets.

Madame Madou, formerly a fish-woman, but thrown, some ten years since,
into the dried-fruit trade by a liaison with the former proprietor of
her present business (an affair which had long fed the gossip of the
markets), had originally a vigorous and enticing beauty, now lost
however in a vast embonpoint. She lived on the lower floor of a yellow
house, which was falling to ruins, and was held together at each story
by iron cross-bars. The deceased proprietor had succeeded in getting rid
of all competitors, and had made his business a monopoly. In spite of a
few slight defects of education, his heiress was able to carry it along,
and take care of her stores, which were in coachhouses, stables, and
old workshops, where she fought the vermin with eminent success. Not
troubled with desk or ledgers, for she could neither read nor write, she
answered a le