fumer can be."

"Let me hear what it is."

"I know that hair has lately occupied all your vigils, and that you have
given yourself up to analyzing it; while you have thought of glory, I
have thought of commerce."

"Dear Monsieur Birotteau, what is it you want of me,--the analysis of
hair?" He took up a little paper. "I am about to read before the Academy
of Sciences a monograph on that subject. Hair is composed of a rather
large quantity of mucus, a small quantity of white oil, a great deal of
greenish oil, iron, a few atoms of oxide of manganese, some phosphate of
lime, a tiny quantity of carbonate of lime, a little silica, and a good
deal of sulphur. The differing proportions of these component parts
cause the differences in the color of the hair. Red hair, for instance,
has more greenish oil than any other."

Cesar and Popinot opened their eyes to a laughable extent.

"Nine things!" cried Birotteau. "What! are there metals and oils in
hair? Unless I heard it from you, a man I venerate, I could not believe
it. How amazing! God is great, Monsieur Vauquelin."

"Hair is produced by a follicular organ," resumed the great chemist,--"a
species of pocket, or sack, open at both extremities. By one end it is
fastened to the nerves and the blood vessels; from the other springs the
hair itself. According to some of our scientific brotherhood, among them
Monsieur Blainville, the hair is really a dead matter expelled from that
pouch, or crypt, which is filled with a species of pulp."

"Then hair is what you might call threads of sweat!" cried Popinot, to
whom Cesar promptly administered a little kick on his heels.

Vauquelin smiled at Popinot's idea.

"He knows something, doesn't he?" said Cesar, looking at Popinot. "But,
monsieur, if the hair is still-born, it is impossible to give it life,
and I am lost! my prospectus will be ridiculous. You don't know how
queer the public is; you can't go and tell it--"

"That it has got manure upon its head," said Popinot, wishing to make
Vauquelin laugh again.

"Cephalic catacombs," said Vauquelin, continuing the joke.

"My nuts are bought!" cried Birotteau, alive to the commercial loss. "If
this is so why do they sell--"

"Don't be frightened," said Vauquelin, smiling, "I see it is a question
of some secret about making the hair grow or keeping it from turning
gray. Listen! this is my opinion on the subject, as the result of my
studies."

Here Popinot pricked up his ears lik