Cerizet, living in the midst of dreadful misery, behaved with the
calmness of undertakers in presence of afflicted heirs, of old
sergeants of the Guard among heaps of dead. They no more shuddered on
hearing cries of hunger and despair than surgeons shudder at the cries
of their patients in hospital; they said, as the soldiers and the
dressers said, the perfunctory words, "Have patience! a little
courage! What's the good of grieving? Suppose you kill yourself, what
then? One gets accustomed to everything; be reasonable!"

Though Cerizet took the precaution to hide the money necessary for his
morning operations in the hollow seat of the chair in which he sat,
taking out no more than a hundred francs at a time, which he put in
the pockets of his trousers, never dipping into the funds of the chair
except between the entrance of two batches of clients (keeping his
door locked and not opening it till all was safely stowed in his
pockets), he had really nothing to fear from the various despairs
which found their way from all sides to this rendezvous of misery.
Certainly, there are many different ways of being honest and virtuous;
and the "Monograph of Virtue" has no other basis than this social
axiom.[*] A man is false to his conscience; he fails, apparently, in
delicacy; he forfeits that bloom of honor which, though lost, does
not, as yet, mean general disrepute; at last, however, he fails
decidedly in honor; if he falls into the hands of the correctional
police, he is not, as yet, guilty of crime before the court of
assizes; but after he is branded with infamy by the verdict of a jury
he may still be honored at the galleys for the species of honor and
integrity practised by criminals among themselves, which consists in
not betraying each other, in sharing booty loyally, and in running all
dangers. Well, this last form of honor--which is perhaps a
calculation, a necessity, the practice of which offers certain