"You think you can laugh at me, great man," returned Vauvinet, once
more jovial and caressing; "you've turned La Fontaine's fable of 'Le
Chene et le Roseau' into an elixir-- Come, Gubetta, my old
accomplice," he continued, seizing Bixiou round the waist, "you want
money; well, I can borrow three thousand francs from my friend Cerizet
instead of two; 'Let us be friends, Cinna!' hand over your colossal
cabbages,--made to trick the public like a gardener's catalogue. If I
refused you it was because it is pretty hard on a man who can only do
his poor little business by turning over his money, to have to keep
your Ravenouillet notes in the drawer of his desk. Hard, hard, very
hard!"

"What discount do you want?" asked Bixiou.

"Next to nothing," returned Vauvinet. "It will cost you a miserable
fifty francs at the end of the quarter."

"As Emile Blondet used to say, you shall be my benefactor," replied
Bixiou.

"Twenty per cent!" whispered Gazonal to Bixiou, who replied by a punch
of his elbow in the provincial's oesophagus.

"Bless me!" said Vauvinet opening a drawer in his desk as if to put
away the Ravenouillet notes, "here's an old bill of five hundred
francs stuck in the drawer! I didn't know I was so rich. And here's a
note payable at the end of the month for four hundred and fifty;
Cerizet will take it without much diminution, and there's your sum in
hand. But no nonsense, Bixiou! Hein? to-night, at Carabine's, will you
swear to me--"