" The
statistics drove him to philosophy. He busied himself with great
questions: the social problem, moralisation of the poorer classes,
pisciculture, caoutchouc, railways, etc. He even began to blush at being
a bourgeois. He affected the artistic style, he smoked. He bought two
chic Pompadour statuettes to adorn his drawing-room.
He by no means gave up his shop. On the contrary, he kept well abreast
of new discoveries. He followed the great movement of chocolates; he
was the first to introduce "cocoa" and "revalenta" into the
Seine-Inferieure. He was enthusiastic about the hydro-electric
Pulvermacher chains; he wore one himself, and when at night he took off
his flannel vest, Madame Homais stood quite dazzled before the golden
spiral beneath which he was hidden, and felt her ardour redouble for
this man more bandaged than a Scythian, and splendid as one of the Magi.
He had fine ideas about Emma's tomb. First he proposed a broken column
with some drapery, next a pyramid, then a Temple of Vesta, a sort of
rotunda, or else a "mass of ruins.
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