“This,” said Bixiou, imitating Odry in “Les Funambules,” “is high comedy, for we will make the first orator we meet pose for us, and you shall see that in those halls of legislation, as elsewhere, the Parisian language has but two tones,--Self-interest, Vanity.” As they got into their citadine, Leon saw in a rapidly driven cabriolet a man to whom he made a sign that he had something to say to him. “There’s Publicola Masson,” said Leon to Bixiou. “I’m going to ask for a sitting this evening at five o’clock, after the Chamber. The cousin shall then see the most curious of all the originals.” “Who is he?” asked Gazonal, while Leon went to speak to Publicola Masson. “An artist-pedicure,” replied Bixiou, “author of a ‘Treatise on Corporistics,’ who cuts your corns by subscription, and who, if the Republications triumph for six months, will assuredly become immortal.” “Drives his carriage!” ejaculated Gazonal. “But, my good Gazonal, it is only millionaires who have time to go afoot in Paris.” “To the Chamber!” cried Leon to the coachman, getting back into the carriage. “Which, monsieur?” “Deputies,” replied Leon, exchanging a smile with Bixiou. “Paris begins to confound me,” said Gazonal. “To make you see its immensity,--moral, political, and literary,--we are now proceeding like the Roman cicerone, who shows you in Saint Peter’s the thumb of the statue you took to be life-size, and the thumb proves to be a foot long. You haven’t yet measured so much as a great toe of Paris.” “And remark, cousin Gazonal, that we take things as they come; we haven’t selected.” “This evening you shall sup as they feasted at Belshazzar’s; and there you shall see our Paris, our own particular Paris, playing lansquenet, and risking a hundred thousand francs at a throw without winking.” A quarter of an hour later the citadine stopped at the foot of the steps going up to the Chamber of Deputies, at that end of the Pont de la Concorde which leads to discord. “I thought the Chamber unapproachable?” said the provincial, surprised to find himself in the great lobby. “That depends,” replied Bixiou; “materially speaking, it costs thirty sous for a citadine to approach it; politically, you have to spend rather more. The swallows thought, so a poet says, that the Arc de Triomphe was erected for them; we artists think that this public building was built for us,--to compensate for the stupidities of the Theatre-Francais and make us laugh; but the comedians on this stage are much more expensive; and they don’t give us every day the value of our money.” “So this is the Chamber!” cried Gazonal, as he paced the great hall in which there were then about a dozen persons, and looked around him with an air which Bixiou noted down in his memory and reproduced in one of the famous caricatures with which he rivalled Gavarni.