ettle a piece
of business."

In spite of Roguin's clever precautions, Monsieur and Madame Ragon,
people of old-fashioned middle-class breeding, the observer Pillerault,
Cesarine, and her mother were disagreeably impressed at first sight by
this sham banker of high finance.

About twenty-eight years of age at the time of which we write, the late
commercial traveller possessed not a hair on his head, and wore a
wig curled in ringlets. This head-gear needed, by rights, a virgin
freshness, a lacteal purity of complexion, and all the softer
corresponding graces: as it was, however, it threw into ignoble relief a
pimpled face, brownish-red in color, inflamed like that of the conductor
of a diligence, and seamed with premature wrinkles, which betrayed in
the puckers of their deep-cut lines a licentious life, whose misdeeds
were still further evidenced by the badness of the man's teeth, and the
black speckles which appeared here and there on his corrugated skin.
Claparon had the air of a provincial comedian who knows all the roles,
and plays the clown with a wink; his cheeks, where the rouge never
stuck, were jaded by excesses, his lips clammy, though his tongue
was forever wagging, especially when he was drunk; his glances were
immodest, and his gestures compromising. Such a face, flushed with the
jovial features of punch, was enough to turn grave business matters
into a farce; so that the embryo banker had been forced to put himself
through a long course of mimicry before he managed to acquire even the
semblance of a manner that accorded with his fictitious importance.

Du Tillet assisted in dressing him for this occasion, like the manager
of a theatre who is uneasy about the debut of his principal actor; he
feared lest the vulgar habits of this devil-may-care life should crop up
to the surface of the newly-fledged banker. "Talk as little as you can,"
he said to him. "No banker ever gabbles; he acts, thinks, reflects,
listens, weighs. To seem like a banker you must say nothing, or, at any
rate, mere nothings. Check that ribald eye of yours, and look serious,
even if you have to look stupid. If you talk politics, go for the
government, but keep to generalities. For instance: 'The budget is
heavy'; 'No compromise is possible between the parties'; 'The Liberals
are dangerous'; 'The Bourbons must avoid a conflict'; 'Liberalism is
the cloak of a coalition'; 'The Bourbons are inaugurating an era of
prosperity: let us sustain the