“You think you can laugh at me, great man,” returned Vauvinet, once more jovial and caressing; “you’ve turned La Fontaine’s fable of ‘Le Chene et le Roseau’ into an elixir--Come, Gubetta, my old accomplice,” he continued, seizing Bixiou round the waist, “you want money; well, I can borrow three thousand francs from my friend Cerizet instead of two; ‘Let us be friends, Cinna!’ hand over your colossal cabbages,--made to trick the public like a gardener’s catalogue. If I refused you it was because it is pretty hard on a man who can only do his poor little business by turning over his money, to have to keep your Ravenouillet notes in the drawer of his desk. Hard, hard, very hard!” “What discount do you want?” asked Bixiou. “Next to nothing,” returned Vauvinet. “It will cost you a miserable fifty francs at the end of the quarter.” “As Emile Blondet used to say, you shall be my benefactor,” replied Bixiou. “Twenty per cent!” whispered Gazonal to Bixiou, who replied by a punch of his elbow in the provincial’s oesophagus. “Bless me!” said Vauvinet opening a drawer in his desk as if to put away the Ravenouillet notes, “here’s an old bill of five hundred francs stuck in the drawer! I didn’t know I was so rich. And here’s a note payable at the end of the month for four hundred and fifty; Cerizet will take it without much diminution, and there’s your sum in hand. But no nonsense, Bixiou! Hein? to-night, at Carabine’s, will you swear to me--” “Haven’t we _re_-friended?” said Bixiou, pocketing the five-hundred-franc bill and the note for four hundred and fifty. “I give you my word of honor that you shall see du Tillet, and many other men who want to make their way--their railway--to-night at Carabine’s.” Vauvinet conducted the three friends to the landing of the staircase, cajoling Bixiou on the way. Bixiou kept a grave face till he reached the outer door, listening to Gazonal, who tried to enlighten him on his late operation, and to prove to him that if Vauvinet’s follower, Cerizet, took another twenty francs out of his four hundred and fifty, he was getting money at forty per cent. When they reached the asphalt Bixiou frightened Gazonal by the laugh of a Parisian hoaxer,--that cold, mute laugh, a sort of labial north wind. “The assignment of the contract for that railway is adjourned, positively, by the Chamber; I heard this yesterday from that marcheuse whom we smiled at just now. If I win five or six thousand francs at lansquenet to-night, why should I grudge sixty-five francs for the power to stake, hey?”