He manifested his independence—­born of his colossal influence—­by his satisfied and successful air.  The former Marseillaise clothes-dealer, in his youth pouncing upon the sailors of the port and Maltese and Levantine seamen, to palm off on them a second-hand coat or trousers, as the wardrobe dealers of the Temple hook the passer-by, Salomon Molina, who had paraded his rags and his hopes on the Canebiere, dreaming at the back of his dark shop of the triumphs, the pleasures, the revels and the indigestions that money affords, had, moreover, always preserved the bitterness of those wretched days and his red, Jewish lip expressed the gall of his painful experiences.

His first word as he entered Vaudrey’s cabinet, asserting the virginity of his efforts at solicitation, betrayed his bitterness.

Now, triumphant, powerful, delighted, feasted and fat, his massive form, his gross flesh and his money were in evidence all over Paris.  His huge paunch, shaking with laughter, filled the stage-boxes at the theatres.  He expanded his broad shoulders as he reclined in the caleche that deposited him on race-days at the entrance of the weighing-enclosure.  He held by the neck, as it were, everything of the Parisian quarry that yelps and bounds about money, issues of stock, and the food of public fortune:  bankers, stock-brokers, and jobbers, financial, political and exchange editors, wretches running after a hundred sous, statesmen in a fair way to fortune; and he distributed to this little crowd, just as he would throw food into a kennel, the discounts and clippings of his ventures, taking malicious pleasure, the insolent delight of a fortunate upstart, in feigning at the moment when loans were issued, sickness that had no existence, in order to have the right of keeping his chamber, of hearing persons of exalted names ringing at his door and dancing attendance upon him,—­powerful, influential and illustrious persons,—­him, the second-hand dealer and chafferer from Marseilles.

It was then that he tasted the joy of supreme power, that delight which titillated even his marrow, and after having rested all day, the prey of a convenient neuralgia, he experienced the unlimited pleasure of force overcoming mind, the blow of a fist crushing a weakling, as with a white cravat he appeared in some salon, in the greenroom of the ballet, or in the dressing-room of a premiere, saying with the mocking smile of triumph and the assurance attending a gorged appetite: 

“I was sick to-day, I suffered from neuralgia!  The Minister of Finance called on me!—­Baron Nathan came to get information from me!”

Among all the pleasures experienced by this man, he valued feminine virtue occasionally purchased with gold as little in comparison with the virgin souls, honor and virtue that he often succeeded in humiliating, in bending before him like a reed, and snuffing out with his irony, whenever necessity placed at his mercy any of those puritanical beings who had passed sometimes with haughty brow before the millions of this man of money.  It was then that the clothes-dealer took his revenge in all its hideousness.  There was no pity to be expected from this fat, smiling and easy-going man.  His fat fingers strangled more certainly than the lean hands of a usurer.  Molina never pardoned.