"He has obtained a monopoly of the sale of hair in bulk, as a certain dealer in comestibles who is going to sell us a pate for three francs has acquired a monopoly of the sale of truffles; he discounts the paper of that business; he loans money on pawn to clients when embarrassed; he gives annuities on lives; he gambles at the Bourse; he is a stockholder in all the fashion papers; and he sells, under the name of a certain chemist, an infamous drug which, for his share alone, gives him an income of thirty thousand francs, and costs in advertisements a hundred thousand yearly."
"Is it possible!" cried Gazonal.
"Remember this," said Bixiou, gravely. "In Paris there is no such thing as a small business; all things swell to large proportions, down to the sale of rags and matches. The lemonade-seller who, with his napkin under his arm, meets you as you enter his shop, may be worth his fifty thousand francs a year; the waiter in a restaurant is eligible for the Chamber; the man you take for a beggar in the street carries a hundred thousand francs worth of unset diamonds in his waistcoat pocket, and didn't steal them either."
The three inseparables (for one day at any rate) now crossed the Place de la Bourse in a way to intercept a man about forty years of age, wearing the Legion of honor, who was coming from the boulevard by way of the rue Neuve-Vivienne.
"Hey!" said Leon, "what are you pondering over, my dear Dubourdieu?
Some fine symbolic composition? My dear cousin, I have the pleasure to present to you our illustrious painter Dubourdieu, not less celebrated for his humanitarian convictions than for his talents in art.
Dubourdieu, my cousin Palafox."
Dubourdieu, a small, pale man with melancholy blue eyes, bowed slightly to Gazonal, who bent low as before a man of genius.
"So you have elected Stidmann in place of--" he began.
"How could I help it? I wasn't there," replied Lora.
"You bring the Academy into disrepute," continued the painter. "To choose such a man as that! I don't wish to say ill of him, but he works at a trade. Where are you dragging the first of arts,--the art those works are the most lasting; bringing nations to light of which the world has long lost even the memory; an art which crowns and consecrates great men? Yes, sculpture is priesthood; it preserves the ideas of an epoch, and you give its chair to a maker of toys and mantelpieces, an ornamentationist, a seller of bric-a-brac! Ah! as Chamfort said, one has to swallow a viper every morning to endure the life of Paris. Well, at any rate, Art remains to a few of us; they can't prevent us from cultivating it--"
"And besides, my dear fellow, you have a consolation which few artists possess; the future is yours," said Bixiou. "When the world is converted to our doctrine, you will be at the head of your art; for you are putting into it ideas which people will understand--WHEN they are generalized! In fifty years from now you'll be to all the world what you are to a few of us at this moment,--a great man. The only question is how to get along till then."
"I have just finished," resumed the great artist, his face expanding like that of a man whose hobby is stroked, "an allegorical figure of Harmony; and if you will come and see it, you will understand why it should have taken me two years to paint it. Everything is in it! At the first glance one divines the destiny of the globe. A queen holds a shepherd's crook in her hand,--symbolical of the advancement of the races useful to mankind; she wears on her head the cap of Liberty; her breasts are sixfold, as the Egyptians carved them--for the Egyptians foresaw Fourier; her feet are resting on two clasped hands which embrace a globe,--symbol of the brotherhood of all human races; she tramples cannon under foot to signify the abolition of war; and I have tried to make her face express the serenity of triumphant agriculture.
I have also placed beside her an enormous curled cabbage, which, according to our master, is an image of Harmony. Ah! it is not the least among Fourier's titles to veneration that he has restored the gift of thought to plants; he has bound all creation in one by the signification of things to one another, and by their special language.
A hundred years hence this earth will be much larger than it is now."
"And how will that, monsieur, come to pass?" said Gazonal, stupefied at hearing a man outside of a lunatic asylum talk in this way.
"Through the extending of production. If men will apply The System, it will not be impossible to act upon the stars."
"What would become of painting in that case?" asked Gazonal.
"It would be magnified."
"Would our eyes be magnified too?" said Gazonal, looking at his two friends significantly.
"Man will return to what he was before he became degenerate; our six-feet men will then be dwarfs."
"Is your picture finished?" asked Leon.
"Entirely finished," replied Dubourdieu. "I have tried to see Hiclar, and get him to compose a symphony for it; I wish that while viewing my picture the public should hear music a la Beethoven to develop its ideas and bring them within range of the intellect by two arts. Ah! if the government would only lend me one of the galleries of the Louvre!"
"I'll mention it, if you want me to do so; you should never neglect an opportunity to strike minds."
"Ah! my friends are preparing articles; but I am afraid they'll go too far."
"Pooh!" said Bixiou, "they can't go as far as the future."
Dubourdieu looked askance at Bixiou, and continued his way.
"Why, he's mad," said Gazonal; "he is following the moon in her courses."