Honore de Balzac: Cousin Betty

1. PART I: THE PRODIGAL FATHER (continued)

"Well, shall I find a pigeon-hole for you? Listen, you old pirate. Women are what you want. They are consolation in all circumstances. Attend now.--At the end of the Alley, Rue Saint-Maur-du-Temple, there is a poor family I know of where there is a jewel of a little girl, prettier than I was at sixteen.--Ah! there is a twinkle in your eye already!--The child works sixteen hours a day at embroidering costly pieces for the silk merchants, and earns sixteen sous a day--one sou an hour!--and feeds like the Irish, on potatoes fried in rats' dripping, with bread five times a week--and drinks canal water out of the town pipes, because the Seine water costs too much; and she cannot set up on her own account for lack of six or seven thousand francs. Your wife and children bore you to death, don't they?--Besides, one cannot submit to be nobody where one has been a little Almighty. A father who has neither money nor honor can only be stuffed and kept in a glass case."

The Baron could not help smiling at these abominable jests.

"Well, now, Bijou is to come to-morrow morning to bring me an embroidered wrapper, a gem! It has taken six months to make; no one else will have any stuff like it! Bijou is very fond of me; I give her tidbits and my old gowns. And I send orders for bread and meat and wood to the family, who would break the shin-bones of the first comer if I bid them.--I try to do a little good. Ah! I know what I endured from hunger myself!--Bijou has confided to me all her little sorrows. There is the making of a super at the Ambigu-Comique in that child. Her dream is to wear fine dresses like mine; above all, to ride in a carriage. I shall say to her, 'Look here, little one, would you like to have a friend of--' How old are you?" she asked, interrupting herself. "Seventy-two?"

"I have given up counting."