"I suppose you give a performance?" D---- smiled slightly, and repeated the wink he had once before given his comrade.
"Performances!" he replied. "Never! or rather, I give them after my own fashion; I will explain that to you presently, but I will first amuse you by telling you how I manage to get a handsome prize for the lessons I give my amateurs; after that I will return to my _performances_.
"You can suppose, for reasons easy to understand that I only give lessons to young men whose pockets I presume are well lined. On beginning my explanations I tell my pupil that I leave my price to him, and during the lesson I perform an interlude which must heighten his generosity.
"Drawing near my pigeon--pray pardon the word--"
"Ah, very good; I beg your pardon. I say, taking one of his buttons in my hand, 'Here is a mould piercing the cloth, and you might lose it.'
"At the same time I throw a Louis on the table; then I examine his buttons, one after the other, and pretend to draw a gold piece from each. As I only perform this trick as a harmless pleasantry, I pick up my gold with the greatest indifference. I even push my indifference so far as to leave one or two by mistake on the table, but only for a short time, of course.
"I continue my lesson, and, as I expected, my pupil pays but slight attention to it, being fully engaged with the reflections I have so skillfully suggested. Can he offer five francs to a man who appears to have his pocket full of gold? Of course not; the least he can do is to add one more piece to those I had displayed, and that always happens.
"Like a modern Bias, then, I carry all my fortune about me; I am sometimes tolerably rich, and then my pockets are well lined. Often enough, too, I am reduced to a dozen of these 'yellow boys,' but them I never touch, as they are the instruments by which I procure others. Many times I have gone without my dinner, though having this small fortune in my pocket, because I laid it down as a rule not to break into it."
"The performances you give in society," I said to my narrator, in order to bring him back to that point, "are of course more lucrative?"
"They are so, but prudence prevents me giving them so often as I should like."