d
women don't like bald-heads; hey! hey! Mimi? The demand for that article
grows out of the political situation. A composition which will keep the
hair in good health will sell like bread; all the more if it has the
sanction, as it will have, of the Academy of Sciences. My good Monsieur
Vauquelin will perhaps help me once more. I shall go to him to-morrow
and submit my idea; offering him at the same time that engraving which
I have at last found in Germany, after two years' search. He is
now engaged in analyzing hair: Chiffreville, his associate in the
manufacture of chemical products, told me so. If my discovery should
jump with his, my essence will be bought by both sexes. The idea is
a fortune; I repeat it. Mon Dieu! I can't sleep. Hey! luckily little
Popinot has the finest head of hair in the world. A shop-girl with hair
long enough to touch the ground, and who could say--if the thing were
possible without offence to God or my neighbor--that the Oil Comagene
(for it shall be an oil, decidedly) has had something to do with
it,--all the gray-heads in Paris will fling themselves upon the
invention like poverty upon the world. Hey! hey! Mignonne! how about the
ball? I am not wicked, but I should like to meet that little scamp du
Tillet, who swells out with his fortune and avoids me at the Bourse. He
knows that I know a thing about him which was not fine. Perhaps I have
been too kind to him. Isn't it odd, wife, that we are always punished
for our good deeds?--here below, I mean. I behaved like a father to him;
you don't know all I did for him."

"You give me goose-flesh merely speaking of it. If you knew what he
wished to make of you, you would never have kept the secret of his
stealing that three thousand francs,--for I guessed just how the thing
was done. If you had sent him to the correctional police, perhaps you
would have done a service to a good many people."

"What did he wish to make of me?"

"Nothing. If you were inclined to listen to me to-night, I would give
you a piece of good advice, Birotteau; and that is, to let your du
Tillet alone."

"Won't it seem strange if I exclude him from my house,--a clerk for whom
I endorsed to the amount of twenty thousand francs when he first went
into business? Come, let us do good for good's sake. Besides, perhaps du
Tillet has mended his ways."

"Everything is to be turned topsy-turvy, then?"

"What do you mean with your topsy-turvy? Everything will be ruled like a
s