But there's too much wear
and tear; I prefer the career of PORTER.' Massol kept his countenance,
and replied: 'I think there's more wear and tear in that, but as your
choice is made I'll see what I can do'; and he got him, as
Ravenouillet says, his first 'cordon.'"
"I was the first master," said Leon, "to consider the race of porter.
You'll find knaves of morality, mountebanks of vanity, modern
sycophants, septembriseurs, disguised in philanthropy, inventors of
palpitating questions, preaching the emancipation of the negroes,
improvement of little thieves, benevolence to liberated convicts, and
who, nevertheless, leave their porters in a condition worse than that
of the Irish, in holes more dreadful than a mud cabin, and pay them
less money to live on than the State pays to support a convict. I have
done but one good action in my life, and that was to build my porter a
decent lodge."
"Yes," said Bixiou, "if a man, having built a great cage divided into
thousands of compartments like the cells of a beehive or the dens of a
menagerie, constructed to receive human beings of all trades and all
kinds, if that animal, calling itself the proprietor, should go to a
man of science and say: 'I want an individual of the bimanous species,
able to live in holes full of old boots, pestiferous with rags, and
ten feet square; I want him such that he can live there all his life,
sleep there, eat there, be happy, get children as pretty as little
cupids, work, toil, cultivate flowers, sing there, stay there, and
live in darkness but see and know everything,' most assuredly the man
of science could never have invented the porter to oblige the
proprietor; Paris, and Paris only could create him, or, if you choose,
the devil.
Pages:
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57