," she said, plunging
her red arm into a sack of filberts. "Plump, no empty ones, my dear
man. Just think! grocers sell their beggarly trash at twenty-four sous
a pound, and in every four pounds they put a pound of _hollows_. Must I
lose my profits to oblige you? You're nice enough, but you don't please
me all that! If you want so many, we might make a bargain at twenty
francs. I don't want to send away a deputy-mayor,--bad luck to the
brides, you know! Now, just handle those nuts; heavy, aren't they? Less
than fifty to the pound; no worms there, I can tell you."

"Well, then, send six thousand weight, for two thousand francs at ninety
days' sight, to my manufactory, Rue du Faubourg-du-Temple, to-morrow
morning early."

"You're in as great a hurry as a bride! Well, adieu, monsieur the mayor;
don't bear me a grudge. But if it is all the same to you," she added,
following Birotteau through the yard, "I would like your note at forty
days, because I have let you have them too cheap, and I don't want to
lose the discount. Pere Gigonnet may have a tender heart, but he sucks
the soul out of us as a spider sucks a fly."

"Well, then, fifty days. But they are to be weighed by the hundred
pounds, so that there may be no hollow ones. Without that, no bargain."

"Ah, the dog! he knows what he's about," said Madame Madou; "can't make
a fool of him! It is those rascals in the Rue des Lombards who have
put him up to that! Those big wolves are all in a pack to eat up the
innocent lambs."

This lamb was five feet high and three feet round, and she looked like a
mile-post, dressed in striped calico, without a belt.

The perfumer, lost in thought, was ruminating as he went along the Rue
Saint-Honore about his duel with Macassar Oil. He was meditating on
the labels and the shape of the bottles, discussing the quality of the
corks, the color of the placards. And yet people say there is no poetry
in commerce! Newton did not make more calculations for his famous
binomial than Birotteau made for his Comagene Essence,--for by this time
the Oil had subsided into an Essence, and he went from one description
to the other without observing any difference. His head spun with his
computations, and he took the lively activity of its emptiness for the
substantial work of real talent. He was so preoccupied that he passed
the turn leading to his uncle's house in the Rue des Bourdonnais, and
had to return upon his steps.

V

Claude-Joseph