Honoré de Balzac

“ Madame Fontaine, who predicts the future eight times out of ten, was never able to know if she would win or lose in a lottery."
"It is the same thing in magnetism," remarked Bixiou. "A man can't magnetize himself."
"Heavens! now we come to magnetism!" cried Gazonal. "Ah ca! do you know everything?"
"Friend Gazonal," replied Bixiou, gravely, "to be able to laugh at everything one must know everything. As for me, I've been in Paris since my childhood; I've lived, by means of my pencil, on its follies and absurdities, at the rate of five caricatures a month. ”

“ It is easy to see by the way his wife looks at him and listens to him that she believes in the genius and glory of her husband. Vital loves artists, not that he has any taste for art, but from fellowship; for he feels himself an artist, and makes this felt by disclaiming that title of nobility, and placing himself with constant premeditation at so great a distance from the arts that persons may be forced to say to him: "You have raised the construction of hats to the height of a science."
"Have you at last discovered a hat to suit me?" asked Leon de Lora. ”

“ A great hair-dresser, hey! he's like Careme and Vestris in their careers. (Head a little this way, if you please, SO; I attend particularly to front faces!) Our profession is ruined by bunglers who understand neither the epoch nor their art. There are dealers in wigs and essences who are enough to make one's hair stand on end; they care only to sell you bottles. It is pitiable! But that's business. Such poor wretches cut hair and dress it as they can. I, when I arrived in Paris from Toulouse, my ambition was to succeed the great Marius, to be a true Marius, to make that name illustrious. ”

“ In these days, my dear fellow, under our new political dispensation, every human being tries to cover himself with glory, and most of them cover themselves with ridicule; hence a lot of living caricatures quite new to the world."
"If everybody gets glory, who can be famous?" said Gazonal.
"Fame! none but fools want that," replied Bixiou. "Your cousin wears the cross, but I'm the better dressed of the two, and it is I whom people are looking at." ”

“ The consulter himself throws grain upon the cards; Bilouche comes and pecks it. Astaroth crawls over the cards to get the food the client holds for him, and those two wonderful intelligences are never mistaken. Will you see them at work?—you will then know your future. The cost is a hundred francs."
Gazonal, horrified by the gaze of Astaroth, rushed into the antechamber, after bowing to the terrible old woman. He was moist from head to foot, as if under the incubation of some evil spirit.
"Let us get away!" he said to the two artists. ”

“ You have seen the ballet, and you'll now see it defiling past you in its every-day clothes, without knowing that the face of your lawsuit depends on a pair of those legs."
"My lawsuit!"
"See, cousin, here comes what is called a marcheuse."
Leon pointed to one of those handsome creatures who at twenty-five years of age have lived sixty, and whose beauty is so real and so sure of being cultivated that they make no display of it. She was tall, and walked well, with the arrogant look of a dandy; her toilet was remarkable for its ruinous simplicity. ”

“ Ah! as Chamfort said, one has to swallow a viper every morning to endure the life of Paris. Well, at any rate, Art remains to a few of us; they can't prevent us from cultivating it—"
"And besides, my dear fellow, you have a consolation which few artists possess; the future is yours," said Bixiou. "When the world is converted to our doctrine, you will be at the head of your art; for you are putting into it ideas which people will understand—when they are generalized! In fifty years from now you'll be to all the world what you are to a few of us at this moment,—a great man. ”

“ If I refused you it was because it is pretty hard on a man who can only do his poor little business by turning over his money, to have to keep your Ravenouillet notes in the drawer of his desk. Hard, hard, very hard!"
"What discount do you want?" asked Bixiou.
"Next to nothing," returned Vauvinet. "It will cost you a miserable fifty francs at the end of the quarter."
"As Emile Blondet used to say, you shall be my benefactor," replied Bixiou.
"Twenty per cent!" whispered Gazonal to Bixiou, who replied by a punch of his elbow in the provincial's oesophagus. ”

“ I would not give myself that trouble for a prince; but you are more; you are an artist, and you understand me."
"This is one of our greatest inventors," said Bixiou presenting Gazonal. "He might be as great as Jacquart if he would only let himself die. Our friend, a manufacturer of cloth, has discovered a method of replacing the indigo in old blue coats, and he wants to see you as another great phenomenon, because he has heard of your saying, 'The hat is the man.' That speech of yours enraptured him. Ah! Vital, you have faith; you believe in something; you have enthusiasm for your work." ”

“ Paris, and Paris only could create him, or, if you choose, the devil."
"Parisian creative powers have gone farther than that," said Gazonal; "look at the workmen! You don't know all the products of industry, though you exhibit them. Our toilers fight against the toilers of the continent by force of misery, as Napoleon fought Europe by force of regiments."
"Here we are, at my friend the usurer's," said Bixiou. "His name is Vauvinet. One of the greatest mistakes made by writers who describe our manners and morals is to harp on old portraits. In these days all trades change. ”

“ You don't know anything about Paris. Ask it for a hundred thousand francs to realize an idea that will be useful to humanity,—the steam-engine for instance,—and you'll die, like Salomon de Caux, at Bicetre; but if the money is wanted for some paradoxical absurdity, Parisians will annihilate themselves and their fortune for it. ”

“ But his fame and his power bore him sometimes, and he comes down to laugh with us."
"Ah ca! cousin; why didn't you tell us you belonged to the Opposition?" asked Leon, seizing Gazonal by the arm. "How stupid of you! One deputy more or less to Right or Left and your bed is made."
"We are all for the Others down my way."
"Let 'em go," said Bixiou, with a facetious look; "they have Providence on their side, and Providence will bring them back without you and in spite of themselves. A manufacturer ought to be a fatalist."
"What luck! There's Maxime, with Canalis and Giraud," said Leon. ”

“ Find an uncle. As for a friend who'll sign notes for us there's no such being to be found; the matter-of-factness of the present age is making awful progress."
"I have a friend," said Bixiou, motioning to Leon's cousin. "Monsieur here; one of the most distinguished manufacturers of cloth in the South, named Gazonal. His hair is not very well dressed," added Bixiou, looking at the touzled and luxuriant crop on the provincial's head, "but I am going to take him to Marius, who will make him look less like a poodle-dog, an appearance so injurious to his credit, and to ours." ”

“ A hair-dresser, monsieur, a man who divines your soul and your habits, in order to dress your hair conformably with your being, that man has all that constitutes a philosopher—and such he is. See the women! Women appreciate us; they know our value; our value to them is the conquest they make when they have placed their heads in our hands to attain a triumph. I say to you that a hair-dresser—the world does not know what he is. ”

“ What we call 'beaver' in the trade is neither more nor less than hare's-skin. The best qualities are made from the back of the animal, the second from the sides, the third from the belly. I confide to you these trade secrets because you are men of honor. But whether a man has hare's-skin or silk on his head, fifteen or thirty francs in short, the problem is always insoluble. Hats must be paid for in cash, and that is why the hat remains what it is. The honor of vestural France will be saved on the day that gray hats with round crowns can be made to cost a hundred francs. ”

“ Thus a rat who becomes a marcheuse,—that is to say, an ordinary figurante in a ballet,—must have some solid attachment which keeps her in Paris: either a rich man she does not love or a poor man she loves too well. The one you have just seen pass will probably dress and redress three times this evening,—as a princess, a peasant-girl, a Tyrolese; by which she will earn about two hundred francs a month."
"She is better dressed than my prefect's wife."
"If you should go to her house," said Bixiou, "you would find there a chamber-maid, a cook, and a man-servant. ”

“ The present Marius, who takes pupils, has created, he says, the leading school of hair-dressing in the world.
"I've seen, in coming through France," said Gazonal, "a great many signs bearing the words: 'Such a one, pupil of Marius.'"
"His pupils have to wash their hands after every head," said Bixiou; "but Marius does not take them indifferently; they must have nice hands, and not be ill-looking. The most remarkable for manners, appearance, and elocution are sent out to dress heads; and they come back tired to death. Marius himself never turns out except for titled women ”

“ A few rare beings may remain what they originally were, but professions in general have no longer either their special costume or their formerly fixed habits and ways. In the past we had Gobseck, Gigounet, Samonon,—the last of the Romans; to-day we rejoice in Vauvinet, the good-fellow usurer, the dandy who frequents the greenroom and the lorettes, and drives about in a little coupe with one horse. Take special note of my man, friend Gazonal, and you'll see the comedy of money, the cold man who won't give a penny, the hot man who snuffs a profit ”

“ Being an honest man who never lies on his own account, he whispered to me as he mounted the breach: 'Heaven knows what I shall say to them.' A mad desire to laugh overcame me, and as one mustn't laugh on the ministerial bench I rushed out, for my youth does come back to me most unseasonably at times."
"At last," cried Gazonal, "I've found an honest man in Paris! You must be a very superior man," he added, looking at the stranger.
"Ah ca! who is this gentleman?" said the ci-devant young man, examining Gazonal.
"My cousin," said Leon, hastily. ”

“ You'll find knaves of morality, mountebanks of vanity, modern sycophants, septembriseurs, disguised in philanthropy, inventors of palpitating questions, preaching the emancipation of the negroes, improvement of little thieves, benevolence to liberated convicts, and who, nevertheless, leave their porters in a condition worse than that of the Irish, in holes more dreadful than a mud cabin, and pay them less money to live on than the State pays to support a convict. ”

“ Madame Fontaine, for it was really a woman, had a black hen on her right hand and a huge toad, named Astaroth, on her left. Gazonal did not at first perceive them.
The toad, of surprising dimensions, was less alarming in himself than through the effect of two topaz eyes, large as a ten-sous piece, which cast forth vivid gleams. It was impossible to endure that look. The toad is a creature as yet unexplained. Perhaps the whole animal creation, including man, is comprised in it; for, as Lassailly said, the toad exists indefinitely ”

“ And all three were presently rolling in the direction of the Marais.
"What are you taking me to see now?" asked Gazonal.
"The proof of what Bixiou told you," replied Leon; "we shall show you a woman who makes twenty thousand francs a year by working a fantastic idea."
"A fortune-teller," said Bixiou, interpreting the look of the Southerner as a question. "Madame Fontaine is thought, by those who seek to pry into the future, to be wiser in her wisdom than Mademoiselle Lenormand."
"She must be very rich," remarked Gazonal. ”

“ Vauvinet winked an eye at Bixiou; the wink that two jockeys give each other when they want to say: "Don't try trickery."
"Don't you remember catching me round the waist as if I were a pretty woman," said Bixiou, "and coaxing me with look and speech, and saying, 'I'll do anything for you if you'll only get me shares at par in that railroad du Tillet and Nucingen have made an offer for?' Well, old fellow, du Tillet and Nucingen are coming to Carabine's to-night, where they will meet a number of political characters. You've lost a fine opportunity. ”

“ Such as you see her, she is worn out with fatigue; she exhausted her body this morning in the dancing-class, she is just leaving a rehearsal where the evolutions are as complicated as a Chinese puzzle; and she'll go through them again to-night. The rat is one of the primary elements of the Opera; she is to the leading danseuse what a junior clerk is to a notary. The rat is—hope."
"Who produces the rat?" asked Gazonal.
"Porters, paupers, actors, dancers," replied Bixiou. ”

“ At the first glance one divines the destiny of the globe. A queen holds a shepherd's crook in her hand,—symbolical of the advancement of the races useful to mankind; she wears on her head the cap of Liberty; her breasts are sixfold, as the Egyptians carved them—for the Egyptians foresaw Fourier; her feet are resting on two clasped hands which embrace a globe,—symbol of the brotherhood of all human races ”

“ Now, take the aristocracy—there is but one man there who has truly comprehended the Hat; and that is the Prince de Bethune. How is it that men do not consider, as women do, that the hat is the first thing that strikes the eye? ”

“ I heard this yesterday from that marcheuse whom we smiled at just now. If I win five or six thousand francs at lansquenet to-night, why should I grudge sixty-five francs for the power to stake, hey?"
"Lansquenet is another of the thousand facets of Paris as it is," said Leon. "And therefore, cousin, I intend to present you to-night in the salon of a duchess,—a duchess of the rue Saint-Georges, where you will see the aristocracy of the lorettes, and probably be able to win your lawsuit. But it is quite impossible to present you anywhere with that mop of Pyrenean hair; you look like a porcupine ”

“ Dubourdieu looked askance at Bixiou, and continued his way.
"Why, he's mad," said Gazonal; "he is following the moon in her courses."
"His skill is masterly," said Leon, "and he knows his art, but Fourierism has killed him. You have just seen, cousin, one of the effects of ambition upon artists. Too often, in Paris, from a desire to reach more rapidly than by natural ways the celebrity which to them is fortune, artists borrow the wings of circumstance, they think they make themselves of more importance as men of a specialty, the supporters of some 'system' ”