(Head a little this way, if you please, SO; I attend particularly to front faces!) Our profession is ruined by bunglers who understand neither the epoch nor their art. There are dealers in wigs and essences who are enough to make one’s hair stand on end; they care only to sell you bottles. It is pitiable! But that’s business. Such poor wretches cut hair and dress it as they can. I, when I arrived in Paris from Toulouse, my ambition was to succeed the great Marius, to be a true Marius, to make that name illustrious. I alone, more than all the four others, I said to myself, ‘I will conquer, or die.’ (There! now sit straight, I am going to finish you.) I was the first to introduce _elegance_; I made my salons the object of curiosity. I disdain advertisements; what advertisements would have cost, monsieur, I put into elegance, charm, comfort. Next year I shall have a quartette in one of the salons to discourse music, and of the best. Yes, we ought to charm away the ennui of those whose heads we dress. I do not conceal from myself the annoyances to a client. (Look at yourself!) To have one’s hair dressed is fatiguing, perhaps as much so as posing for one’s portrait. Monsieur knows perhaps that the famous Monsieur Humbolt (I did the best I could with the few hairs America left him--science has this in common with savages, that she scalps her men clean), that illustrious savant, said that next to the suffering of going to be hanged was that of going to be painted; but I place the trial of having your head dressed before that of being painted, and so do certain women. Well, monsieur, my object is to make those who come here to have their hair cut or frizzed enjoy themselves. (Hold still, you have a tuft which _must_ be conquered.) A Jew proposed to supply me with Italian cantatrices who, during the interludes, were to depilate the young men of forty; but they proved to be girls from the Conservatoire, and music-teachers from the Rue Montmartre. There you are, monsieur; your head is dressed as that of a man of talent ought to be. Ossian,” he said to the lacquey in livery, “dress monsieur and show him out. Whose turn next?” he added proudly, gazing round upon the persons who awaited him. “Don’t laugh, Gazonal,” said Leon as they reached the foot of the staircase, whence his eye could take in the whole of the Place de la Bourse. “I see over there one of our great men, and you shall compare his language with that of the barber, and tell me which of the two you think the most original.” “Don’t laugh, Gazonal,” said Bixiou, mimicking Leon’s intonation. “What do you suppose is Marius’s business?” “Hair-dressing.”