Vital is a man between thirty and forty years of age, with a natural joviality now repressed by ambitious ideas. He is blessed with that medium height which is the privilege of sound organizations. He is rather plump, and takes great pains with his person. His forehead is getting bald, but he uses that circumstance to give himself the air of a man consumed by thought. It is easy to see by the way his wife looks at him and listens to him that she believes in the genius and glory of her husband. Vital loves artists, not that he has any taste for art, but from fellowship; for he feels himself an artist, and makes this felt by disclaiming that title of nobility, and placing himself with constant premeditation at so great a distance from the arts that persons may be forced to say to him: "You have raised the construction of hats to the height of a science."
"Have you at last discovered a hat to suit me?" asked Leon de Lora.
"Why, monsieur! in fifteen days?" replied Vital, "and for you! Two months would hardly suffice to invent a shape in keeping with your countenance. See, here is your lithographic portrait: I have studied it most carefully. I would not give myself that trouble for a prince; but you are more; you are an artist, and you understand me."
"This is one of our greatest inventors," said Bixiou presenting Gazonal. "He might be as great as Jacquart if he would only let himself die. Our friend, a manufacturer of cloth, has discovered a method of replacing the indigo in old blue coats, and he wants to see you as another great phenomenon, because he has heard of your saying, 'The hat is the man.' That speech of yours enraptured him. Ah! Vital, you have faith; you believe in something; you have enthusiasm for your work."
Vital scarcely listened; he grew pale with pleasure.
"Rise, my wife! Monsieur is a man of science."
Madame Vital rose at her husband's gesture. Gazonal bowed to her.
"Shall I have the honor to cover your head?" said Vital, with joyful obsequiousness.
"At the same price as mine," interposed Bixiou.
"Of course, of course; I ask no other fee than to be quoted by you, messieurs-- Monsieur needs a picturesque hat, something in the style of Monsieur Lousteau's," he continued, looking at Gazonal with the eye of a master. "I will consider it."
"You give yourself a great deal of trouble," said Gazonal.
"Oh! for a few persons only; for those who know how to appreciate the value of the pains I bestow upon them. Now, take the aristocracy--there is but one man there who has truly comprehended the Hat; and that is the Prince de Bethune. How is it that men do not consider, as women do, that the hat is the first thing that strikes the eye? And why have they never thought of changing the present system, which is, let us say it frankly, ignoble? Yes, ignoble; and yet a Frenchman is, of all nationalities, the one most persistent in this folly! I know the difficulties of a change, messieurs. I don't speak of my own writings on the matter, which, as I think, approach it philosophically, but simply as a hatter. I have myself studied means to accentuate the infamous head-covering to which France is now enslaved until I succeed in overthrowing it.
So saying he pointed to the hideous hat in vogue at the present day.
"Behold the enemy, messieurs," he continued. "How is it that the wittiest and most satirical people on earth will consent to wear upon their heads a bit of stove-pipe?--as one of our great writers has called it. Here are some of the infections I have been able to give to those atrocious lines," he added, pointing to a number of his creations. "But, although I am able to conform them to the character of each wearer--for, as you see, there are the hats of a doctor, a grocer, a dandy, an artist, a fat man, a thin man, and so forth--the style itself remains horrible. Seize, I beg of you, my whole thought--"
He took up a hat, low-crowned and wide-brimmed.
"This," he continued, "is the old hat of Claude Vignon, a great critic, in the days when he was a free man and a free-liver. He has lately come round to the ministry; they've made him a professor, a librarian; he writes now for the Debats only; they've appointed him Master of Petitions with a salary of sixteen thousand francs; he earns four thousand more out of his paper, and he is decorated. Well, now see his new hat."
And Vital showed them a hat of a form and design which was truly expressive of the juste-milieu.
"You ought to have made him a Punch and Judy hat!" cried Gazonal.
"You are a man of genius, Monsieur Vital," said Leon.
Vital bowed.
"Would you kindly tell me why the shops of your trade in Paris remain open late at night,--later than the cafes and the wineshops? That fact puzzles me very much," said Gazonal.
"In the first place, our shops are much finer when lighted up than they are in the daytime; next, where we sell ten hats in the daytime we sell fifty at night."
"Everything is queer in Paris," said Leon.
"Thanks to my efforts and my successes," said Vital, returning to the course of his self-laudation, "we are coming to hats with round headpieces. It is to that I tend!"
"What obstacle is there?" asked Gazonal.