"Poor Bianchon! he will never be anything but a good fellow," said
Rastignac to himself as the cab drove off.



"Rastignac has given me the most difficult negotiation in the world,"
said Bianchon to himself, remembering, as he rose next morning, the
delicate commission intrusted to him. "However, I have never asked the
smallest service from my uncle in Court, and have paid more than a
thousand visits gratis for him. And, after all, we are not apt to
mince matters between ourselves. He will say Yes or No, and there an
end."

After this little soliloquy the famous physician bent his steps, at
seven in the morning, towards the Rue du Fouarre, where dwelt Monsieur
Jean-Jules Popinot, judge of the Lower Court of the Department of the
Seine. The Rue du Fouarre--an old word meaning straw--was in the
thirteenth century the most important street in Paris. There stood the
Schools of the University, where the voices of Abelard and of Gerson
were heard in the world of learning. It is now one of the dirtiest
streets of the Twelfth Arrondissement, the poorest quarter of Paris,
that in which two-thirds of the population lack firing in winter,
which leaves most brats at the gate of the Foundling Hospital, which
sends most beggars to the poorhouse, most rag-pickers to the street
corners, most decrepit old folks to bask against the walls on which
the sun shines, most delinquents to the police courts.

Half-way down this street, which is always damp, and where the gutter
carries to the Seine the blackened waters from some dye-works, there