"At a certain age men will turn their souls inside out to get hair, if
they haven't any. For some time past hair-dressers have told me that
they sell not only Macassar, but all the drugs which are said to dye
hair or make it grow. Since the peace, men are more with women, and
women don't like bald-heads; hey! hey! Mimi? The demand for that
article grows out of the political situation. A composition which will
keep the hair in good health will sell like bread; all the more if it
has the sanction, as it will have, of the Academy of Sciences. My good
Monsieur Vauquelin will perhaps help me once more. I shall go to him
to-morrow and submit my idea; offering him at the same time that
engraving which I have at last found in Germany, after two years'
search. He is now engaged in analyzing hair: Chiffreville, his
associate in the manufacture of chemical products, told me so. If my
discovery should jump with his, my essence will be bought by both
sexes. The idea is a fortune; I repeat it. Mon Dieu! I can't sleep.
Hey! luckily little Popinot has the finest head of hair in the world.
A shop-girl with hair long enough to touch the ground, and who could
say--if the thing were possible without offence to God or my neighbor
--that the Oil Comagene (for it shall be an oil, decidedly) has had
something to do with it,--all the gray-heads in Paris will fling
themselves upon the invention like poverty upon the world. Hey! hey!
Mignonne! how about the ball? I am not wicked, but I should like to
meet that little scamp du Tillet, who swells out with his fortune and
avoids me at the Bourse. He knows that I know a thing about him which
was not fine. Perhaps I have been too kind to him. Isn't it odd, wife,
that we are always punished for our good deeds?--here below, I mean. I
behaved like a father to him; you don't know all I did for him."

"You give me goose-flesh merely speaking of it. If you knew what he
wished to make of you, you would never have kept the secret of his