that exists at this day—­in the Almanach de Gotha.  The instinct of self-preservation, working it may be unconsciously, leads the banker to seek a title.  Jacques Coeur was the founder of the great noble house of Noirmoutier, extinct in the reign of Louis XIII.  What power that man had!  He was ruined for making a legitimate king; and he died, prince of an island in the Archipelago, where he built a magnificent cathedral.”

“Oh! you are giving us an historical lecture, we are wandering away from the present, the crown has no right of conferring nobility, and barons and counts are made with closed doors; more is the pity!” said Finot.

“You regret the times of the savonnette a vilain, when you could buy an office that ennobled?” asked Bixiou.  “You are right. Je reviens a nos moutons.—­Do you know Beaudenord?  No? no? no?  Ah, well!  See how all things pass away!  Poor fellow, ten years ago he was the flower of dandyism; and now, so thoroughly absorbed that you no more know him than Finot just now knew the origin of the expression ’coup de Jarnac’—­I repeat that simply for the sake of illustration, and not to tease you, Finot.  Well, it is a fact, he belonged to the Faubourg Saint-Germain.

“Beaudenord is the first pigeon that I will bring on the scene.  And, in the first place, his name was Godefroid de Beaudenord; neither Finot, nor Blondet, nor Couture, nor I am likely to undervalue such an advantage as that!  After a ball, when a score of pretty women stand behooded waiting for their carriages, with their husbands and adorers at their sides, Beaudenord could hear his people called without a pang of mortification.  In the second place, he rejoiced in the full complement of limbs; he was whole and sound, had no mote in his eyes, no false hair, no artificial calves; he was neither knock-kneed nor bandy-legged, his dorsal column was straight, his waist slender, his hands white and shapely.  His hair was black; he was of a complexion neither too pink, like a grocer’s assistant, nor yet too brown, like a Calabrese.  Finally, and this is an essential point, Beaudenord was not too handsome, like some of our friends that look rather too much of professional beauties to be anything else; but no more of that; we have said it, it is shocking!  Well, he was a crack shot, and sat a horse to admiration; he had fought a duel for a trifle, and had not killed his man.

“If you wish to know in what pure, complete, and unadulterated happiness consists in this Nineteenth Century in Paris—­the happiness, that is to say, of a young man of twenty-six—­do you realize that you must enter into the infinitely small details of existence?  Beaudenord’s bootmaker had precisely hit off his style of foot; he was well shod; his tailor loved to clothe him.  Godefroid neither rolled his r’s, nor lapsed into Normanisms nor Gascon; he spoke pure and correct French, and tied his cravat correctly (like Finot).  He had neither father nor mother—­such luck