lazily up to it, examines it with a careless
air, and then drops it with a look of
disappointment. Just as he is passing on, he asks
the owner what price he may put upon it. The
answer, of course, does not satisfy him. Four
sous for that skin? He doesn't mind giving
two sous. He generally finds that the
owner lets him have it at his own price. In
this way he wanders all day long, from
street to street, picking up bargains. In
one street, he will secure an old hat for six
sous; in another, he will get four or five
pounds of white rags, by paying for three
pounds at the rate of three sous per pound.
For, the prudent Auvergnat cheats in weight.
One man owned to me that he averaged
four pounds over weight in twenty, as
a rule. Thus, in counting the value they
put upon clean white rags, at three sous per
pound, they literally pay twenty per cent
less than the nominal price given.

The rabbit-skin buyer does not always
confine his operations to skins, rags, and
iron; but extends them, whenever he has
an opportunity, to the purchase of old boots
and grease. This latter commodity, however,
is not much sought after now, since the hotel
proprietors burn composition candles (those
bougies well-known to most travellers as
making the most extortionate item of all
continental hotels), and the waiters have no
longer grease pots to dispose of. All these
extra purchases are bargains to which the
rabbit-skin buyer is open—as he is open to
anything which leads to profit. It is his business
in Paris to make money. He does not
want the money to spend in choppines, or to
dance with work-girls: he has a pocket into
which he intends to button it securely, so
that he may leave the capital at the earliest
possible moment. He makes usually
between three and four francs a day by his
bargains in rabbit-skins, so that he is able
to put away, regularly, two francs and a
half. But his business requires capital;
and it is precisely for this reason that he is
firm in his resolve to save. The more he can
save, the more he can make; since he is
enabled to accumulate his bargains and to sell
only when the market is high. The most
flourishing of the rabbit-skin buyers of Paris
sell their skins only once in six months.
Many of them, when they have been some
years at the business; when they have made
themselves thoroughly acquainted with the
tricks of the trade; take a little shop
where the wife carries on the business
while the husband wanders through the
streets in quest of skins. And the
anecdotes of little fortunes accumulated in
this way, the little properties dotted
about Auvergne, which represent only so
many rabbits eaten in the Bois de Boulogne,
would astonish any casual observer.

The profit ranges from one sou and a half
to three sous per skin. They soon enable the
prudent Auvergnat to enlarge his sphere of
operations; but, in his prosperity, when he
counts his savings by hundreds and even
thousands of francs, he does not usually lose
his head. He sticks to his original calling,
goes out daily in quest of skins, and deposits
his money in a safe quarter. The skin, to
him, is a reality; every other speculation,
except old rags, leather, and so forth, is
wild and unreal. He will not embark in
anything more respectable than his original
calling. He has faith in nothing which is
not second or third hand.

I once met a remarkable specimen of the
rabbit-skin buyers of Paris. He was a sullen
man, with a strong sense of independence.
This sense led him to the conclusion that to
be sociable was to be a slave. In vain might
the subtlest logician strive to wean him
from his creed. He had lived up to it
strictly. He had been pressed to join many
of the little associations of his brethren—to
be one of six; but he had always declined to
be subject to the rules of anybody. He
would be his own free agent; he would take his
soup at the house where he felt inclined to take
it; he would have a room where he could do
exactly as he pleased, without having to
consult a second individual's whims. And at
the time he spoke, he was enjoying his own
inclination in the matter of a choppine at a
wine-shop. He acknowledged at once, that,
unlike the rest of his brotherhood, he had not
saved a sous. But, he justified his spend-
thrift habits as complacently as he accounted
for his happy isolation. He had nobody to care
or provide for. He had no reason to save.
When he was without money, he knew how
to make it. It was very true that many
rabbit-skin buyers of his acquaintance had
saved considerable sums of money; but he
did not envy them their economy.

"There is Grigot," he said to me one day,
"who began life in his twelfth year as a
chimney-sweeper. He remained a sweep
until he was fifteen, when he joined his
brother in the business of rabbit-skin buyer.
By degrees they managed to save sufficient
money to establish themselves in a rag
and old iron shop. Their plan was to take
the street by turns: one day one brother kept
the shop while the other went his round for
rabbit-skins. In this way they worked together
during six years, when the sweep's brother
died. At the time of his brother's death they
had saved twelve thousand francs," or four
hundred and eighty pounds sterling. "Their
mother had begged her bread for years, when
the six thousand francs left by her dead son
were sent to her, to make her comfortable for
the rest of her life. But the surviving brother,
thus deprived of the partner of his
business, was destined to lose the partner
of his bosom also within six months.
This double affliction weighed heavily
upon him, and he grieved till he became
so ill that he was incapacitated for
work during eighteen mouths. His sister