You
must wear a loose serge coat, and you will look like a comfortable
householder. Call yourself Thoul, if that is your fancy. I will tell
Bijou that you are an uncle of mine come from Germany, having failed
in business, and you will be cosseted like a divinity.--There now,
Daddy!--And who knows! you may have no regrets. In case you should be
bored, keep one Sunday rig-out, and you can come and ask me for a
dinner and spend the evening here."
"I!--and I meant to settle down and behave myself!--Look here, borrow
twenty thousand francs for me, and I will set out to make my fortune
in America, like my friend d'Aiglemont when Nucingen cleaned him out."
"You!" cried Josepha. "Nay, leave morals to work-a-day folks, to raw
recruits, to the _worrrthy_ citizens who have nothing to boast of but
their virtue. You! You were born to be something better than a
nincompoop; you are as a man what I am as a woman--a spendthrift of
genius."
"We will sleep on it and discuss it all to-morrow morning."
"You will dine with the Duke. My d'Herouville will receive you as
civilly as if you were the saviour of the State; and to-morrow you can
decide. Come, be jolly, old boy! Life is a garment; when it is dirty,
we must brush it; when it is ragged, it must be patched; but we keep
it on as long as we can."
This philosophy of life, and her high spirits, postponed Hulot's
keenest pangs.
At noon next day, after a capital breakfast, Hulot saw the arrival of
one of those living masterpieces which Paris alone of all the cities
in the world can produce, by means of the constant concubinage of
luxury and poverty, of vice and decent honesty, of suppressed desire
and renewed temptation, which makes the French capital the daughter of
Ninevah, of Babylon, and of Imperial Rome.
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