everything?"

"He is right," said Lousteau, who had hitherto listened without
speaking; "La Torpille can laugh and make others laugh. That gift of
all great writers and great actors is proper to those who have
investigated every social deep. At eighteen that girl had already
known the greatest wealth, the most squalid misery--men of every
degree. She bears about her a sort of magic wand by which she lets
loose the brutal appetites so vehemently suppressed in men who still
have a heart while occupied with politics or science, literature or
art. There is not in Paris another woman who can say to the beast as
she does: 'Come out!' And the beast leaves his lair and wallows in
excesses. She feeds you up to the chin, she helps you to drink and
smoke. In short, this woman is the salt of which Rabelais writes,
which, thrown on matter, animates it and elevates it to the marvelous
realms of art; her robe displays unimagined splendor, her fingers drop
gems as her lips shed smiles; she gives the spirit of the occasion to
every little thing; her chatter twinkles with bright sayings, she has
the secret of the quaintest onomatopoeia, full of color, and giving
color; she----"

"You are wasting five francs' worth of copy," said Bixiou,
interrupting Lousteau. "La Torpille is something far better than all
that; you have all been in love with her more or less, not one of you
can say that she ever was his mistress. She can always command you;
you will never command her. You may force your way in and ask her to
do you a service----"

"Oh, she is more generous than a brigand chief who knows his business,
and more devoted than the best of school-fellows," said Blondet. "You