The young man was now a witness, as he sat at his desk, of all the audacious and burlesque inventions, all the heroi-comic schemes of that mendicancy of a great city, organized like a ministerial department and in numbers like an army, which subscribes to the newspapers and knows its _Bottin_ by heart. It was his business to receive the fair-haired lady, young, brazen-faced and already faded, who asks for only a hundred louis, threatening to throw herself into the water immediately upon leaving the house if they are not forthcoming, and the stout matron, with affable, unceremonious manners, who says on entering the room: "Monsieur, you do not know me. Nor have I the honor of knowing you; but we shall soon know each other. Be kind enough to sit down and let us talk." The tradesman in difficulties, on the brink of insolvency--it is sometimes true--who comes to entreat you to save his honor, with a pistol all ready for suicide bulging out the pocket of his coat--sometimes it is only the bowl of his pipe. And oftentimes cases of genuine distress, prolix and tiresome, of people who do not even know how to tell how unfitted they are to earn their living. Besides such instances of avowed mendicancy, there were others in disguise: charity, philanthropy, good works, encouragement of artists, house-to-house collections for children's hospitals, parish churches, penitentiaries, benevolent societies or district libraries. And lastly those that array themselves in a worldly mask: tickets to concerts, benefit performances, tickets of all colors, "platform, front row, reserved sections." The Nabob's orders were that no one should be refused, and it was a decided gain that he no longer attended to such matters in person. For a long time he had deluged all this hypocritical scheming with gold, with lordly indifference, paying five hundred francs for a ticket to a concert by some Wurtemberg zither-player, or Languedocian flutist, which would have been quoted at ten francs at the Tuileries or the Due de Mora's. On some days young de Gery went out from these sessions actually nauseated. All his youthful honesty rose in revolt; he attempted to induce the Nabob to institute some reforms; but he, at the first word, assumed the bored expression characteristic of weak natures when called upon to give an opinion, or else replied with a shrug of his great shoulders: "Why this is Paris, my dear child. Don't you be alarmed, but just let me alone. I know where I'm going and what I want." He wanted two things at that time,--a seat in the Chamber of Deputies and the cross of the Legion of Honor. In his view those were the first two stages of the long ascent which his ambition impelled him to undertake. He certainly would be chosen a deputy through the _Caisse Territoriale_, at the head of which he was. Paganetti from Porto-Vecchio often said to him: "When the day comes, the island will rise as one man and vote for you."