This was the individual whom Etienne and Lucien discovered in his filthy counting-house, busily affixing tickets to the backs of a parcel of books from a recent sale.  In a glance, the friends exchanged the innumerable questions raised by the existence of such a creature; then they presented Gabusson’s introduction and Fendant and Cavalier’s bills.  Samanon was still reading the note when a third comer entered, the wearer of a short jacket, which seemed in the dimly-lighted shop to be cut out of a piece of zinc roofing, so solid was it by reason of alloy with all kinds of foreign matter.  Oddly attired as he was, the man was an artist of no small intellectual power, and ten years later he was destined to assist in the inauguration of the great but ill-founded Saint-Simonian system.

“I want my coat, my black trousers, and satin waistcoat,” said this person, pressing a numbered ticket on Samanon’s attention.  Samanon touched the brass button of a bell-pull, and a woman came down from some upper region, a Normande apparently, to judge by her rich, fresh complexion.

“Let the gentleman have his clothes,” said Samanon, holding out a hand to the newcomer.  “It’s a pleasure to do business with you, sir; but that youngster whom one of your friends introduced to me took me in most abominably.”

“Took him in!” chuckled the newcomer, pointing out Samanon to the two journalists with an extremely comical gesture.  The great man dropped thirty sous into the money-lender’s yellow, wrinkled hand; like the Neapolitan lazzaroni, he was taking his best clothes out of pawn for a state occasion.  The coins dropped jingling into the till.

“What queer business are you up to?” asked Lousteau of the artist, an opium-eater who dwelt among visions of enchanted palaces till he either could not or would not create.

“He lends you a good deal more than an ordinary pawnbroker on anything you pledge; and, besides, he is so awfully charitable, he allows you to take your clothes out when you must have something to wear.  I am going to dine with the Kellers and my mistress to-night,” he continued; “and to me it is easier to find thirty sous than two hundred francs, so I keep my wardrobe here.  It has brought the charitable usurer a hundred francs in the last six months.  Samanon has devoured my library already, volume by volume” (livre a livre).

“And sou by sou,” Lousteau said with a laugh.

“I will let you have fifteen hundred francs,” said Samanon, looking up.

Lucien started, as if the bill-broker had thrust a red-hot skewer through his heart.  Samanon was subjecting the bills and their dates to a close scrutiny.

“And even then,” he added, “I must see Fendant first.  He ought to deposit some books with me.  You aren’t worth much” (turning to Lucien); “you are living with Coralie, and your furniture has been attached.”

Lousteau, watching Lucien, saw him take up his bills, and dash out into the street.  “He is the devil himself!” exclaimed the poet.  For several seconds he stood outside gazing at the shop front.  The whole place was so pitiful, that a passer-by could not see it without smiling at the sight, and wondering what kind of business a man could do among those mean, dirty shelves of ticketed books.