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Page 30
"How are matters going with you?" asked Leon, delivering to Publicola
one of his feet, already washed and prepared by the valet.
"I am forced to take two pupils,--two young fellows who, despairing of
fortune, have quitted surgery for corporistics; they were actually
dying of hunger; and yet they are full of talent."
"I'm not asking you about pedestrial affairs, I want to know how you
are getting on politically."
Masson gave a glance at Gazonal, more eloquent than any species of
question.
"Oh! you can speak out, that's my cousin; in a way he belongs to you;
he thinks himself legitimist."
"Well! we are coming along, we are advancing! In five years from now
Europe will be with us. Switzerland and Italy are fermenting finely;
and when the occasion comes we are all ready. Here, in Paris, we have
fifty thousand armed men, without counting two hundred thousand
citizens who haven't a penny to live upon."
"Pooh," said Leon, "how about the fortifications?"
"Pie-crust; we can swallow them," replied Masson.
"In the first place, we sha'n't let the cannon in, and, in the second,
we've got a little machine more powerful than all the forts in the
world,--a machine, due to a doctor, which cured more people during the
short time we worked it than the doctors ever killed."
"How you talk!" exclaimed Gazonal, whose flesh began to creep at
Publicola's air and manner.
"Ha! that's the thing we rely on! We follow Saint-Just and
Robespierre; but we'll do better than they; they were timid, and you
see what came of it; an emperor! the elder branch! the younger branch!
The Montagnards didn't lop the social tree enough."
"Ah ca! you, who will be, they tell me, consul, or something of that
kind, tribune perhaps, be good enough to remember," said Bixiou, "that
I have asked your protection for the last dozen years."
"No harm shall happen to you; we shall need wags, and you can take the
place of Barere," replied the corn-doctor.
"And I?" said Leon.
"Ah, you! you are my client, and that will save you; for genius is an
odious privilege, to which too much is accorded in France; we shall be
forced to annihilate some of our greatest men in order to teach others
to be simple citizens."
The corn-cutter spoke with a semi-serious, semi-jesting air that made
Gazonal shudder.
"So," he said, "there's to be no more religion?"
"No more religion OF THE STATE," replied the pedicure, emphasizing the
last words; "every man will have his own. It is very fortunate that
the government is just now endowing convents; they'll provide our
funds. Everything, you see, conspires in our favour. Those who pity
the peoples, who clamor on behalf of proletaries, who write works
against the Jesuits, who busy themselves about the amelioration of no
matter what,--the communists, the humanitarians, the philanthropists,
you understand,--all these people are our advanced guard. While we are
storing gunpowder, they are making the tinder which the spark of a
single circumstance will ignite."
"But what do you expect will make the happiness of France?" cried
Gazonal.
"Equality of citizens and cheapness of provisions. We mean that there
will be no persons lacking anything, no millionaires, no suckers of
blood and victims."
"That's it!--maximum and minimum," said Gazonal.
"You've said it," replied the corn-cutter, decisively.
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