LITMIR.BIZ

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      “You!”

      “Why shouldn’t I be the Baron Gaudissart, peer of France? Haven’t they twice elected Monsieur Popinot as deputy from the fourth arrondissement? He dines with Louis Phillippe. There’s Finot; he is going to be, they say, a member of the Council. Suppose they send me as ambassador to London? I tell you I’d nonplus those English! No man ever got the better of Gaudissart, the illustrious Gaudissart, and nobody ever will. Yes, I say it! no one ever outwitted me, and no one can—in any walk of life, politics or impolitics, here or elsewhere. But, for the time being, I must give myself wholly to the capitalists; to the ‘Globe,’ the ‘Movement,’ the ‘Children,’ and my article Paris.”

      “You will be brought up with a round turn, you and your newspapers. I’ll bet you won’t get further than Poitiers before the police will nab you.”

      “What will you bet?”

      “A shawl.”

      “Done! If I lose that shawl I’ll go back to the article Paris and the hat business. But as for getting the better of Gaudissart—never! never!”

      And the illustrious traveller threw himself into position before Jenny, looked at her proudly, one hand in his waistcoat, his head at three-quarter profile—an attitude truly Napoleonic.

      “Oh, how funny you are! what have you been eating to-night?”

      Gaudissart was thirty-eight years of age, of medium height, stout and fat like men who roll about continually in stage-coaches, with a face as round as a pumpkin, ruddy cheeks, and regular features of the type which sculptors of all lands adopt as a model for statues of Abundance, Law, Force, Commerce, and the like. His protuberant stomach swelled forth in the shape of a pear; his legs were small, but active and vigorous. He caught Jenny up in his arms like a baby and kissed her.

      “Hold your tongue, young woman!” he said. “What do you know about Saint-Simonism, antagonism, Fourierism, criticism, heroic enterprise, or woman’s freedom? I’ll tell you what they are—ten francs for each subscription, Madame Gaudissart.”

      “On my word of honor, you are going crazy, Gaudissart.”

      “More and more crazy about YOU,” he replied, flinging his hat upon the sofa.

      The next morning Gaudissart, having breakfasted gloriously with Jenny, departed on horseback to work up the chief towns of the district to which he was assigned by the various enterprises in whose interests he was now about to exercise his great talents. After spending forty-five days in beating up the country between Paris and Blois, he remained two weeks at the latter place to write up his correspondence and make short visits to the various market towns of the department. The night before he left Blois for Tours he indited a letter to Mademoiselle Jenny Courand. As the conciseness and charm of this epistle cannot be equalled by any narration of ours, and as, moreover, it proves the legitimacy of the tie which united these two individuals, we produce it here:—

      “My dear Jenny—You will lose your wager. Like Napoleon,

       Gaudissart the illustrious has his star, but NOT his Waterloo. I

       triumph everywhere. Life insurance has done well. Between Paris

       and Blois I lodged two millions. But as I get to the centre of

       France heads become infinitely harder and millions correspondingly

       scarce. The article Paris keeps up its own little jog-trot. It is

       a ring on the finger. With all my well-known cunning I spit these

       shop-keepers like larks. I got off one hundred and sixty-two

       Ternaux shawls at Orleans. I am sure I don’t know what they will

       do with them, unless they return them to the backs of the sheep.

       “As to the article journal—the devil! that’s a horse of another

       color. Holy saints! how one has to warble before you can teach

       these bumpkins a new tune. I have only made sixty-two ‘Movements’:

       exactly a hundred less for the whole trip than the shawls in one

       town. Those republican rogues! they won’t subscribe. They talk,

       they talk; they share your opinions, and presently you are all

       agreed that every existing thing must be overturned. You feel sure

       your man is going to subscribe. Not a bit of it! If he owns three

       feet of ground, enough to grow ten cabbages, or a few trees to

       slice into toothpicks, the fellow begins to talk of consolidated

       property, taxes, revenues, indemnities—a whole lot of stuff, and

       I have wasted my time and breath on patriotism. It’s a bad

       business! Candidly, the ‘Movement’ does not move. I have written

       to the directors and told them so. I am sorry for it—on account

       of my political opinions.

       “As for the ‘Globe,’ that’s another breed altogether. Just set to

       work and talk new doctrines to people you fancy are fools enough

       to believe such lies—why, they think you want to burn their

       houses down! It is vain for me to tell them that I speak for

       futurity, for posterity, for self-interest properly understood;

       for enterprise where nothing can be lost; that man has preyed upon

       man long enough; that woman is a slave; that the great

       providential thought should be made to triumph; that a way must be

       found to arrive at a rational co-ordination of the social fabric,

      —in short, the whole reverberation of my sentences. Well, what do

       you think? when I open upon them with such ideas these provincials

       lock their cupboards as if I wanted to steal their spoons and beg

       me to go away! Are not they fools? geese? The ‘Globe’ is smashed.

       I said to the proprietors, ‘You are too advanced, you go ahead too

       fast: you ought to get a few results; the provinces like results.’

       However, I have made a hundred ‘Globes,’ and I must say,

       considering the thick-headedness of these clodhoppers, it is a

       miracle. But to do it I had to make them such a lot of promises

       that I am sure I don’t know how the globites, globists, globules,

       or whatever they call themselves, will ever get out of them. But

       they always tell me they can make the world a great deal better

       than it is, so I go ahead and prophesy to the value of ten francs

       for each subscription. There was one farmer who thought the paper

       was agricultural because of its name. I Globed HIM. Bah! he gave

       in at once; he had a projecting forehead; all men with projecting

       foreheads are ideologists.

       “But the ‘Children’; oh! ah! as to the ‘Children’! I got two

       thousand between Paris and Blois. Jolly business! but there is not

       much to say. You just show a little vignette to the mother,

       pretending to hide it from the child: naturally the child wants to

       see, and pulls mamma’s gown and cries for its newspaper, because

       ‘Papa has DOT his.’ Mamma can’t let her brat tear the gown; the

       gown costs thirty francs, the subscription six—economy; result,

      

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