Honoré de Balzac

“ The countess, dressed to the nines, went to the dining-room. Mahuchet heard her and opened the door. Gracious! when she saw that table sparkling with silver, the covers to the dishes and the chandeliers all glittering like a jewel-case, didn’t she go off like soda-water and fire her shot: ‘When people spend the money of others they should be sober and not give dinner-parties. Think of your being a countess and owing three hundred francs to a poor shoemaker with seven children!’ You can guess how she railed, for the Mahuchet hasn’t any education. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The moment that the species of inward mirror on which the past or the future is reflected to their minds become clouded by the breath of a personal feeling, by an idea foreign to the purpose of the power they are exerting, sorcerers and sorceresses can see nothing; just as an artist who blurs art with political combinations and systems loses his genius. Not long ago, a man endowed with the gift of divining by cards, a rival to Madame Fontaine, became addicted to vicious practices, and being unable to tell his own fate from the cards, was arrested, tried, and condemned at the court of assizes. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ One is a republican, another Saint-Simonian; this one aristocrat, that one Catholic, others juste-milieu, middle ages, or German, as they choose for their purpose. Now, though opinions do not give talent, they always spoil what talent there is; and the poor fellow whom you have just seen is a proof thereof. An artist’s opinion ought to be: Faith in his art, in his work; and his only way of success is toil when nature has given him the sacred fire.”
“Let us get away,” said Bixiou. “Leon is beginning to moralize.”
“But that man was sincere,” said Gazonal, still stupefied. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Vital is a man between thirty and forty years of age, with a natural joviality now repressed by ambitious ideas. He is blessed with that medium height which is the privilege of sound organizations. He is rather plump, and takes great pains with his person. His forehead is getting bald, but he uses that circumstance to give himself the air of a man consumed by thought. 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ Gazonal asked, interrupting the old creature, of what use the toad and the hen were to her.
“They predict the future. 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.” ”

“ But whether the rustic comprehended the stab of that glance or not, he went on to say (so Massol told me) , ‘I’ve as much ambition as other men. I will never go back to my native place, if I ever do go back, unless I am a rich man. Paris is the antechamber of Paradise. They tell me that you who write the newspapers can make, as they say, ‘fine weather and foul’; that is, you have things all your own way, and it’s enough to ask your help to get any place, no matter what, under government. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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 ”

“ To him there’s no mankind; there are only heads.”
“We let you hear Marius on all the notes of his scale,” said Bixiou, “and you know how to follow our lead.”
As soon as Gazonal showed himself, the glance was given, and was evidently favourable, for Marius exclaimed: “Regulus! yours this head! Prepare it first with the little scissors.”
“Excuse me,” said Gazonal to the pupil, at a sign from Bixiou. “I prefer to have my head dressed by Monsieur Marius himself.” ”

“ The grocer becomes a peer of France, artists capitalize their money, vaudevillists have incomes. 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ Having presented Gazonal to this great power, Leon and Bixiou, in order to leave them alone together, made the excuse of looking at a piece of furniture in another room; but before leaving, Bixiou had whispered in the actress’s ear: “He is Leon’s cousin, a manufacturer, enormously rich; he wants to win a suit before the Council of State against his prefect, and he thinks it wise to fascinate you in order to get Massol on his side.”
All Paris knows the beauty of that young actress, and will therefore understand the stupefaction of the Southerner on seeing her. ”

“ To reach that result men must resolve to wear buckles, gold lace, plumes, and the brims lined with satin, as in the days of Louis XIII. and Louis XIV. Our business, which would then enter the domain of fancy, would increase tenfold. The markets of the world should belong to France; Paris will forever give the tone to women’s fashions, and yet the hats which all Frenchmen wear to-day are made in every country on earth! ”

“ 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 ”

“ If the two others had not revealed in the art of dancing a poetry hitherto unperceived, she would have been the leading talent; as it is, she is reduced to the second line. But for all that, she fingers her thirty thousand francs a year, and her faithful friend is a peer of France, very influential in the Chamber. And see! there’s a danseuse of the third order, who, as a dancer, exists only through the omnipotence of a newspaper. If her engagement were not renewed the ministry would have one more journalistic enemy on its back. The corps de ballet is a great power ”

“ 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. ”