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Page 11
Vital scarcely listened; he grew pale with pleasure.
"Rise, my wife! Monsieur is a man of science."
Madame Vital rose at her husband's gesture. Gazonal bowed to her.
"Shall I have the honor to cover your head?" said Vital, with joyful
obsequiousness.
"At the same price as mine," interposed Bixiou.
"Of course, of course; I ask no other fee than to be quoted by you,
messieurs-- Monsieur needs a picturesque hat, something in the style
of Monsieur Lousteau's," he continued, looking at Gazonal with the eye
of a master. "I will consider it."
"You give yourself a great deal of trouble," said Gazonal.
"Oh! for a few persons only; for those who know how to appreciate the
value of the pains I bestow upon them. 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? And
why have they never thought of changing the present system, which is,
let us say it frankly, ignoble? Yes, ignoble; and yet a Frenchman is,
of all nationalities, the one most persistent in this folly! I know
the difficulties of a change, messieurs. I don't speak of my own
writings on the matter, which, as I think, approach it
philosophically, but simply as a hatter. I have myself studied means
to accentuate the infamous head-covering to which France is now
enslaved until I succeed in overthrowing it.
So saying he pointed to the hideous hat in vogue at the present day.
"Behold the enemy, messieurs," he continued. "How is it that the
wittiest and most satirical people on earth will consent to wear upon
their heads a bit of stove-pipe?--as one of our great writers has
called it. Here are some of the infections I have been able to give to
those atrocious lines," he added, pointing to a number of his
creations. "But, although I am able to conform them to the character
of each wearer--for, as you see, there are the hats of a doctor, a
grocer, a dandy, an artist, a fat man, a thin man, and so forth--the
style itself remains horrible. Seize, I beg of you, my whole
thought--"
He took up a hat, low-crowned and wide-brimmed.
"This," he continued, "is the old hat of Claude Vignon, a great
critic, in the days when he was a free man and a free-liver. He has
lately come round to the ministry; they've made him a professor, a
librarian; he writes now for the Debats only; they've appointed him
Master of Petitions with a salary of sixteen thousand francs; he earns
four thousand more out of his paper, and he is decorated. Well, now
see his new hat."
And Vital showed them a hat of a form and design which was truly
expressive of the juste-milieu.
"You ought to have made him a Punch and Judy hat!" cried Gazonal.
"You are a man of genius, Monsieur Vital," said Leon.
Vital bowed.
"Would you kindly tell me why the shops of your trade in Paris remain
open late at night,--later than the cafes and the wineshops? That fact
puzzles me very much," said Gazonal.
"In the first place, our shops are much finer when lighted up than
they are in the daytime; next, where we sell ten hats in the daytime
we sell fifty at night."
"Everything is queer in Paris," said Leon.
"Thanks to my efforts and my successes," said Vital, returning to the
course of his self-laudation, "we are coming to hats with round
headpieces. It is to that I tend!"
"What obstacle is there?" asked Gazonal.
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