Parisians in the Country

Story I

Gaudissart the Great

Is not the commercial traveler—a being unknown in earlier times—one of the most curious types produced by the manners and customs of this age? And is it not his peculiar function to carry out in a certain class of things the immense transition which connects the age of material development with that of intellectual development? Our epoch will be the link between the age of isolated forces rich in original creativeness, and that of the uniform but leveling force which gives monotony to its products, casting them in masses, and following out an unifying idea—the ultimate expression of social communities. After the Saturnalia of intellectual communism, after the last struggles of many civilizations concentrating all the treasures of the world on a single spot, must not the darkness of barbarism invariably supervene?

The commercial traveler is to ideas what coaches are to men and things. He carts them about, he sets them moving, brings them into impact. He loads himself at the centre of enlightenment with a supply of beams which he scatters among torpid communities. This human pyrophoros is an ignorant instructor, mystified and mystifying, a disbelieving priest who talks all the more glibly of arcana and dogmas. A strange figure! The man has seen everything, he knows everything, he is acquainted with everybody. Saturated in Parisian vice, he can assume the rusticity of the countryman. Is he not the link that joins the village to the capital, though himself not essentially either Parisian or provincial?

For he is a wanderer. He never sees to the bottom of things; he learns only the names of men and places, only the surface of things; he has his own foot-rule, and measures everything by that standard; his glance glides over all he sees, and never penetrates the depths. He is inquisitive about everything, and really cares for nothing. A scoffer, always ready with a political song, and apparently equally attached to all parties, he is generally patriotic at heart. A good actor, he can assume by turns the smile of liking, satisfaction, and obligingness, or cast it off and appear in his true character, in the normal frame which is his state of rest.

He is bound to be an observer or to renounce his calling. Is he not constantly compelled to sound a man at a glance, and guess his mode of action, his character, and, above all, his solvency; and, in order to save time, to calculate swiftly the chances of profit? This habit of deciding promptly in matters of business makes him essentially dogmatic; he settles questions out of hand, and talks as a master, of the Paris theatres and actors, and of those in the provinces. Besides, he knows all the good and all the bad places in the kingdom, de actu et visu. He would steer you with equal confidence to the abode of virtue or of vice. Gifted as he is with the eloquence of a hot-water tap turned on at will, he can with equal readiness stop short or begin again, without a mistake, his stream of ready-made phrases, flowing without pause, and producing on the victim the effect of a moral douche. He is full of pertinent anecdotes, he smokes, he drinks. He wears a chain with seals and trinkets, he impresses the “small fry,” is looked at as a milord in the villages, never allows himself to be “got over”—a word of his slang—and knows exactly when to slap his pocket and make the money jingle so as not to be taken for a “sneak” by the women servants—a suspicious race—of the houses he calls at.

As to his energy, is it not the least of the characteristics of this human machine? Not the kite pouncing on its prey, not the stag inventing fresh doublings to escape the hounds and put the hunter off the trail, not the dogs coursing the game, can compare with the swiftness of his rush when he scents a commission, the neatness with which he trips up a rival to gain upon him, the keenness with which he feels, sniffs, and spies out an opportunity for “doing business.” How many special talents must such a man possess! And how many will you find in any country of these diplomats of the lower class, profound negotiators, representatives of the calico, jewelry, cloth, or wine trades, and often with more acumen than ambassadors, who are indeed for the most part but superficial?

Nobody in France suspects the immense power constantly wielded by the commercial traveler, the bold pioneer of the transactions which embody to the humblest hamlet the genius of civilization and Parisian inventiveness in its struggle against the common sense, the ignorance, or the habits of rustic life. We must not overlook these ingenious laborers, by whom the intelligence of the masses is kneaded, moulding the most refractory material by sheer talk, and resembling in this the persevering polishers whose file licks the hardest porphyry smooth. Do you want to know the power of the tongue, and the coercive force of mere phrases on the most tenacious coin known—that of the country freeholder in his rustic lair?—Then listen to what some high dignitary of Paris industry can tell you, for whose benefit these clever pistons of the steam engine called Speculation work, and strike, and squeeze.

“Monsieur,” said the director-cashier-manager-secretary-and-chairman of a famous Fire Insurance Company to an experienced economist, “in the country, out of five hundred thousand francs to be collected in renewing insurances, not more than fifty thousand are paid willingly. The other four hundred and fifty thousand are only extracted by the persistency of our agents, who go to dun the customers who are in arrears till they have renewed their policies, and frighten and excite them by fearful tales of fires.—Eloquence, the gift of the gab, is, in fact, nine-tenths of the matter in the ways and means of working our business.”

To talk—to make oneself heard—is not this seduction? A nation with two Chambers, a woman with two ears, alike are lost! Eve and the Serpent are the perennial myth of a daily recurring fact which began, and will probably only end with the world.

“After two hours’ talk you ought to have won a man over to your side,” said an attorney who had retired from business.

Walk round the commercial traveler! Study the man. Note his olive-green overcoat, his cloak, his morocco stock, his pipe, his blue-striped cotton shirt. In that figure, so genuinely original that it can stand friction, how many different natures you may discover. See! What an athlete, what a circus, and what a weapon! He—the world—and his tongue.

A daring seaman, he embarks with a stock of mere words to go and fish for money, five or six hundred thousand francs, say, in the frozen ocean, the land of savages, of Iroquois—in France! The task before him is to extract by a purely mental process and painless operation the gold that lies buried in rural hiding-places. The provincial fish will not stand the harpoon or the torch; it is only to be caught in the seine or the landing-net—the gentlest snare.

Can you ever think again without a shudder of the deluge of phrases which begins anew every day at dawn in France?—You know the genus; now for the individual.

There dwells in Paris a matchless bagman, the paragon of his kind, a man possessing in the highest degree every condition indispensable to success in his profession. In his words vitriol mingles with birdlime; birdlime to catch the victim, besmear it and stick it to the trapper, vitriol to dissolve the hardest limestone.

His “line” was hats—he traveled in hats; but his gifts, and the skill with which he ensnared folks, had earned him such commercial celebrity that dealers in l’Article Paris, the dainty novelties invented in Paris workshops, positively courted him to undertake their business. Thus, when he was in Paris on his return from some triumphant progress, he was perpetually being feasted; in the provinces the agents made much of him; in Paris the largest houses were respectful to him. Welcomed, entertained, and fed wherever he went, to him a breakfast or a dinner in solitude was a pleasure and a debauch. He led the life of a sovereign—nay, better, of a journalist. And was he not the living organ of Paris trade?

His name was Gaudissart; and his fame, his influence, and the praises poured on him had gained him the epithet of Gaudissart the Great. Wherever he made his appearance, whether in a counting house or an inn, in a drawing-room or a diligence, in a garret or a bank, each one would exclaim on seeing him, “Ah, ha! here is Gaudissart the Great!”

Never was a nickname better suited to the appearance, the manners, the countenance, the voice, or the language of a man. Everything smiled on the Traveler, and he smiled on all. Similia Similibus; he was for homeopathy: Puns, a horselaugh, the complexion of a jolly friar, a Rabelaisian aspect; dress, mien, character, and face combined to give his whole person a stamp of jollification and ribaldry.

Blunt in business, good-natured and capital fun, you would have known him at once for a favorite of the grisette—a man who can climb with a grace to the top of a coach, offer a hand to a lady in difficulties over getting out, jest with the postilion about his bandana, and sell him a hat; smile at the inn-maid, taking her by the waist—or by the fancy; who at table will imitate the gurgle of a bottle by tapping his cheek while putting his tongue in it, knows to make beer go off by drawing the air between his lips, or can hit a champagne glass a sharp blow with a knife without breaking it, saying to the others, “Can you do that?”—who chaffs shy travelers, contradicts well-informed men, is supreme at table, and secures all the best bits.

A clever man too, he could on occasion put aside all such pleasantries, and look very serious when, throwing away the end of his cigar, he would look out on a town and say, “I mean to see what the folks here are made of.” Then Gaudissart was the most cunning and shrewd of ambassadors. He knew how to be the official with the préfet, the capitalist with the banker, orthodox and monarchical with the royalist, the blunt citizen with the citizen—in short, all things to all men, just what he ought to be wherever he went, leaving Gaudissart outside the door, and finding him again as he went out.

Until 1830 Gaudissart the Great remained faithful to the Article Paris. This line of business, in all its branches, appealing to the greater number of human fancies, had enabled him to study the secrets of the heart, had taught him the uses of his persuasive eloquence, the way to open the most closely tied money bags, to incite the fancy of wives and husbands, of children and servants, and to persuade them to gratify it. None so well as he knew how to lure a dealer by the temptations of a job, and to turn away at the moment when his desire for the bait was at a climax. He acknowledged his indebtedness to the hatter’s trade, saying that it was by studying the outside of the head that he had learned to understand its inside, that he was accustomed to find caps to fit folks, to throw himself at their head, and so forth. His jests on hats were inexhaustible.

Nevertheless, after the August and October of 1830, he gave up traveling in hats and the Article Paris, and left off trading in all things mechanical and visible to soar in the loftier spheres of Parisian enterprise. He had given up matter for mind, as he himself said, and manufactured products for the infinitely more subtle outcome of the intellect.

This needs explanation.

The stir and upset of 1830 gave rise, as everybody knows, to the new birth of various antiquated ideas which skilful speculators strove to rejuvenate. After 1830 ideas were more than ever a marketable commodity; and, as was once said by a writer who is clever enough to publish nothing, more ideas than pocket-handkerchiefs are filched nowadays. Some day, perhaps, there may be an Exchange for ideas; but even now, good or bad, ideas have their price, are regarded as a crop imported, transferred, and sold, can be realized, and are viewed as an investment. When there are no ideas in the market speculators try to bring words into fashion, to give them the consistency of an idea, and live on those words as birds live on millet.

Nay, do not laugh! A word is as good as an idea in a country where the ticket on the bale is thought more of than the contents. Have we not seen the book trade thriving on the word “picturesqe” when literature had sealed the doom of the word “fantastic.”

Consequently, the excise has levied a tax on the intellect; it has exactly measured the acreage of advertisements, has assessed the prospectus, and weighed thought—Rue de la Paix Hôtel du Timbre (the Stamp Office). On being constituted taxable goods, the intellect and its products were bound to obey the method used in manufacturing undertakings. Thus the ideas conceived after drinking in the brain of some of those apparently idle Parisians who do battle on intellectual ground while emptying a bottle or carving a pheasant’s thigh, were handed over the day after their mental birth to commercial travelers, whose business it was to set forth, with due skill, urbi et orbi, the fried bacon of advertisement and prospectus by which the departmental mouse is tempted into the editor’s trap, and becomes known in the vulgar tongue as a subscriber, or a shareholder, a corresponding member, or, perhaps, a backer or a part owner—and being always a flat.

“What a flat I am!” has more than one poor investor exclaimed after being tempted by the prospect of founding something, which has finally proved to be the founding that melts down some thousand or twelve hundred francs.

“Subscribers are the fools who cannot understand that it costs more to forge ahead in the realm of intellect than to travel all over Europe,” is the speculator’s view.

So there is a constant struggle going on between the dilatory public which declines to pay the Paris taxes and the collectors who, living on their percentages, baste that public with new ideas, lard it with undertakings, roast it with prospectuses, spit it on flattery, and at last eat it up with some new sauce in which it gets caught and intoxicated like a fly in treacle. What has not been done in France since 1830 to stimulate the zeal, the conceit of the intelligent and progressive masses? Titles, medals, diplomas, a sort of Legion of Honor invented for the vulgar martyrs, have crowded on each other’s heels. And then every manufacturer of intellectual commodities has discovered a spice, a special condiment, his particular makeweight. Hence the promises of premiums and of anticipated dividends; hence the advertisements of celebrated names without the knowledge of the hapless artists who own them, and thus find themselves implicated unawares in more undertakings than there are days in the year; for the Law could not foresee this theft of names. Hence, too, this rape of ideas which the contractors for public intelligence—like the slave merchants of the East—snatch from the paternal brain at a tender age, and strip and parade before the Greenhorn, their bewildered Sultan the terrible public, who, if not amused, beheads them by stopping their rations of gold.

This mania of the day reacted on Gaudissart the Great, and this was how. A company got up to effect insurances on life and property heard of his irresistible eloquence, and offered him extraordinarily handsome terms, which he accepted. The bargain concluded, the compact signed, the bagman was weaned of the past under the eye of the Secretary to the Society, who freed Gaudissart’s mind of its swaddling-clothes, explained the dark corners of the business, taught him its lingo, showed him all the mechanism bit by bit, anatomized the particular class of the public on whom he was to work, stuffed him with cant phrases, crammed him with repartees, stocked him with peremptory arguments, and, so to speak, put an edge on the tongue that was to operate on life in France. The puppet responded admirably to the care lavished on him by Monsieur the Secretary.

The directors of the Insurance Company were so loud in their praises of Gaudissart the Great, showed him so much attention, put the talents of this living prospectus in so favorable a light in the higher circles of banking and of intellectual diplomacy, that the financial managers of two newspapers, then living but since dead, thought of employing him to tout for subscriptions. The Globe, the organ of the doctrines of Saint-Simon, and the Mouvement, a Republican paper, invited Gaudissart the Great to their private offices and promised him, each, ten francs a head on every subscriber if he secured a thousand, but only five francs a head if he could catch no more than five hundred. As the line of the political paper did not interfere with that of the Insurance Company, the bargain was concluded. At the same time, Gaudissart demanded an indemnity of five hundred francs for the week he must spend in “getting up” the doctrine of Saint-Simon, pointing out what efforts of memory and brain would be necessary to enable him to become thoroughly conversant with this article, and to talk of it so coherently as to avoid, said he, “putting his foot in it.”

He made no claim on the Republicans. In the first place, he himself had a leaning to Republican notions—the only views according to the Gaudissart philosophy that could bring about rational equality; and then Gaudissart had ere now dabbled in the plots of the French carbonari. He had even been arrested, but released for lack of evidence; and finally, he pointed out to the bankers of the paper that since July he had allowed his moustache to grow, and that he now only needed a particular shape of cap and long spurs to be representative of the Republic.

So for a week he went every morning to be Saint-Simonized at the Globe office, and every evening he haunted the bureau of the Insurance Company to learn the elegancies of financial slang. His aptitude and memory were so good, that he was ready to start by the 15th of April, the date at which he usually set out on his first annual circuit.

Two large commercial houses, alarmed at the downward tendency of trade, tempted the ambitious Gaudissart still to undertake their agency, and the King of Commercial Travelers showed his clemency in consideration of old friendship and of the enormous percentage he was to take.

“Listen to me, my little Jenny,” said he, riding in a hackney cab with a pretty little flower-maker.

Every truly great man loves to be tyrannized over by some feeble creature, and Jenny was Gaudissart’s tyrant; he was seeing her home at eleven o’clock from the Gymnase theatre, where he had taken her in full dress to a private box on the first tier.

“When I come back, Jenny, I will furnish your room quite elegantly. That gawky Mathilde, who makes you sick with her innuendoes, her real Indian shawls brought by the Russian Ambassador’s messengers, her silver-gilt, and her Russian Prince—who is, it strikes me, a rank humbug—even she shall not find a fault in it. I will devote all the ‘Children’ I can get in the provinces to the decoration of your room.”

“Well, that is a nice story, I must say,” cried the florist. “What, you monster of a man, you talk to me so coolly of your children! Do you suppose I will put up with anything of that kind?”

“Pshaw! Jenny, are you out of your wits? It is a way of talking in my line of business.”

“A pretty line of business indeed!”

“Well, but listen; if you go on talking so much, you will find yourself in the right.”

“I choose always to be in the right! I may say you are a cool hand tonight.”

“You will not let me say what I have to say? I have to push a most capital idea, a magazine that is to be brought out for children. In our walk of life a traveler, when he has worked up a town and got, let us say, ten subscriptions to the Children’s Magazine, says I have got ten Children; just as, if I had ten subscriptions to the Mouvement, I should simply say I have got ten Mouvements.—Now do you understand?”

“A pretty thing too!—So you are meddling in politics? I can see you already in Sainte-Pélagie, and shall have to trot there to see you every day. Oh, when we love a man, my word! If we knew what we are in for, we should leave you to manage for yourselves, you men!—Well, well, you are going tomorrow, don’t let us get the black dog on our shoulders; it is too silly.”

The cab drew up before a pretty house, newly built in the Rue d’Artois, where Gaudissart and Jenny went up to the fourth floor. Here resided Mademoiselle Jenny Courand, who was commonly supposed to have been privately married to Gaudissart, a report which the traveler did not deny. To maintain her power over him, Jenny Courand compelled him to pay her a thousand little attentions, always threatening to abandon him to his fate if he failed in the least of them. Gaudissart was to write to her from each town he stopped at and give an account of every action.

“And how many Children will you want to furnish my room?” said she, throwing off her shawl and sitting down by a good fire.

“I get five sous on each subscription.”

“A pretty joke! Do you expect to make me a rich woman—five sous at a time. Unless you are a Wandering Jew and have your pocket sewn up tight.”

“But, Jenny, I shall get thousands of Children. Just think, the little ones have never had a paper of their own. However, I am a great simpleton to try to explain the economy of business to you—you understand nothing about such matters.”

“And pray, then, Gaudissart, if I am such a gaby, why do you love me?”

“Because you are such a sublime gaby! Listen, Jenny. You see, if I can get people to take the Globe and the Mouvement, and to pay their insurances, instead of earning a miserable eight or ten thousand francs a year by trundling around like a man in a show, I may make twenty to thirty thousand francs out of one round.”

“Unlace my stays, Gaudissart, and pull straight—don’t drag me askew.”

“And then,” said the commercial traveler, as he admired the girl’s satin shoulders, “I shall be a shareholder in the papers, like Finot, a friend of mine, the son of a hatter, who has thirty thousand francs a year, and will get himself made a peer! And when you think of little Popinot!—By the way, I forgot to tell you that Monsieur Popinot was yesterday made Minister of Commerce. Why should not I too be ambitious? Ah, ha! I could easily catch the cant of the Tribune, and I might be made a Minister—something like a Minister too! Just listen:

“ ‘Gentlemen,’ ” and he took his stand behind an armchair, “ ‘the Press is not a mere tool, not a mere trade. From the point of view of the politician, the Press is an Institution. Now we are absolutely required here to take the political view of things, hence’ ”—he paused for breath—“ ‘hence we are bound to inquire whether it is useful or mischievous, whether it should be encouraged or repressed, whether it should be taxed or free—serious questions all. I believe I shall not be wasting the precious moments of this Chamber by investigating this article and showing you the conditions of the case. We are walking on to a precipice. The Laws indeed are not so guarded as they should be—’

“How is that?” said he, looking at Jenny. “Every orator says that France is marching towards a precipice; they either say that or they talk of the Chariot of the State and political tempests and clouds on the horizon. Don’t I know every shade of color! I know the dodges of every trade.—And do you know why? I was born with a caul on. My grandmother kept the caul, and I will give it to you. So, you see, I shall soon be in power!”

“You!”

“Why shouldn’t I be Baron Gaudissart and Peer of France? Has not Monsieur Popinot been twice returned deputy for the fourth Arrondissement?—And he dines with Louis-Philippe. Finot is to be a Councillor of State, they say. Oh! if only they would send me to London as Ambassador, I am the man to nonplus the English, I can tell you. Nobody has ever caught Gaudissart napping—Gaudissart the Great. No, no one has ever got the better of me, and no one ever shall in any line, politics or impolitics, here or anywhere. But for the present I must give my mind to insuring property, to the Globe, to the Mouvement, to the Children’s paper, and to the Article de Paris.”

“You will be caught over your newspapers. I will lay a wager that you will not get as far as Poitiers without being done.”

“I am ready to bet, my jewel.”

“A shawl!”

“Done. If I lose the shawl, I will go back to trade and hats. But, get the better of Gaudissart? Never! never!”

And the illustrious commercial traveler struck on attitude in front of Jenny, looking at her haughtily, one hand in his waistcoat, and his head half turned in a Napoleonic pose.

“How absurd you are! What have you been eating this evening?”

Gaudissart was a man of eight-and-thirty, of middle height, burly and fat, as a man is who is accustomed to go about in mail-coaches; his face was as round as a pumpkin, florid, and with regular features resembling the traditional type adopted by sculptors in every country for their statues of Abundance, of Law, Force, Commerce, and the like. His prominent stomach was pear-shaped, and his legs were thin, but he was wiry and active. He picked up Jenny, who was half undressed, and carried her to her bed.

“Hold your tongue, free woman,” said he. “Ah, you don’t know anything about the free woman and Saint-Simonism, and antagonism, and Fourierism, and criticism, and determined push—well it is—in short, it is ten francs on every subscription, Madame Gaudissart.”

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

“Always more and more crazy about you,” said he, tossing his hat on to the sofa.

Next day, after breakfasting in style with Jenny Courand, Gaudissart set out on horseback to call in all the market towns which he had been particularly instructed to work up by the various companies to whose success he was devoting his genius. After spending forty-five days in beating the county lying between Paris and Blois, he stayed for a fortnight in this little city, devoting the time to writing letters and visiting the neighboring towns. The day before leaving for Tours he wrote to Mademoiselle Jenny Courand the following letter, of which the fullness and charm cannot be matched by any narrative, and which also serves to prove the peculiar legitimacy of the ties that bound these two persons together.

Letter from Gaudissart to Jenny Courand.

“My dear Jenny—I am afraid you will lose your bet. Like Napoleon, Gaudissart has his star, and will know no Waterloo. I have triumphed everywhere under the conditions set forth. The Insurance business is doing very well. Between Paris and Blois I secured near on two millions; but towards the middle of France heads are remarkably hard, and millions infinitely scarcer. The Article Paris toddles on nicely, as usual; it is a ring on your finger. With my usual rattle, I can always come round the shopkeepers. I got rid of sixty-two Ternaux shawls at Orléans; but, on my honor, I don’t know what they will do with them unless they put them back on the sheep.

“As to the newspaper line, the Deuce is in it! that is quite another pair of shoes. God above us! what a deal of piping those good people take before they have learned a new tune. I have got no more than sixty-two Mouvements so far; and that in my whole journey is less than the Ternaux shawls in one town. These rascally Republicans won’t subscribe at all; you talk to them, and they talk; they are quite of your way of thinking, and you soon are all agreed to upset everything that exists. Do you think the man will fork out? Not a bit of it. And if he has three square inches of ground, enough to grow a dozen cabbages, or wood enough to cut a toothpick, your man will talk of the settlement of landed estate, of taxation, and crops, and compensation—a pack of nonsense, while I waste my time and spittle in patriotism. Business is bad, and the Mouvement generally is dull. I am writing to the owners to say so. And I am very sorry as a matter of opinion.

“As to the Globe, that is another story. If I talk of the new doctrines to men who seem likely to have a leaning to such quirks, you might think it was a proposal to burn their house down. I tell them it is the coming thing, the most advantageous to their interests, the principle of work by which nothing is lost;—that men have oppressed men long enough, that woman is a slave, that we must strive to secure the triumph of the great Idea of thrift, and achieve a more rational coordination of Society—in short, all the rhodomontade at my command. All in vain! As soon as I start on this subject, these country louts shut up their cupboards as if I had come to steal something, and beg me to be off.

“What fools these owls are! The Globe is nowhere.—I told them so. I said, ‘You are too advanced. You are getting forward, and that is all very well; but you must have something to show. In the provinces they want to see results.’ However, I have got a hundred Globes; and, seeing the density of these country noodles, it is really a miracle. But I promise them such a heap of fine things, that be hanged if I know how the Globules, or Globists, or Globites, or Globians are ever going to give them. However, as they assured me that they would arrange the world far better than it is arranged at present, I lead the way and prophesy good things at ten francs per head.

“There is a farmer who thought it must have to do with soils, by reason of the name, and I rammed the Globe down his throat; he will take to it, I feel sure; he has a prominent forehead, and men with prominent foreheads are always ideologists.

“But as to the Children! give me the Children. I got two thousand Children between Paris and Blois—a nice little turn! And there is less waste of words. You show the picture to the mother on the sly, so that the child wants to see; then, of course, the child sees; and he tugs at mamma’s skirts till he gets his paper, because ‘Daddy has hisn paper.’ Mamma’s gown cost twenty francs, and she does not want it torn by the brat; the paper costs but six francs, that is cheaper; so the subscription is dragged out. It is a capital, and meets a real want—something between the sugarplum and the picture-book, the two eternal cravings of childhood. And they can read, too, these frenzied brats.

“Here, at the table d’hôte, I had a dispute about newspapers and my opinions. I was sitting, peacefully eating, by the side of a man in a white hat who was reading the Débats. Said I to myself, ‘I must give him a taste of my eloquence. Here is a man who is all for the dynasty; I must try to catch him. Such a triumph would be a splendid forecast of success as a Minister.’ So I set to work, beginning by praising his paper. It was a precious long job, I can tell you. From one thing to another I began to overrule my man, giving him four-horse speeches, arguments in F sharp, and all the precious rhodomontade. Everybody was listening, and I saw a man with July in his moustaches, ready to bite for the Mouvement. But, by ill-luck, I don’t know how I let slip the word ganache.1 Away went my dynastic white hat—and a bad hat too, a Lyons hat, half silk and half cotton—with the bit between his teeth in a fury. So I put on my grand air—you know it—and I say to him, ‘Heyday, monsieur, you are a hot pot! If you are vexed, I am ready to answer for my words. I fought in July—’—‘Though I am the father of a family,’ says he, ‘I am ready—’—‘You are the father of a family, my dear sir,’ say I. You have children?’—‘Yes, monsieur!’—‘Of eleven?’—‘Thereabouts.’—‘Well, then, monsieur, The Children’s Magazine is just about to be published—six francs per annum, one number a month, two columns, contributors of the highest literary rank, got up in the best style, good paper, illustrations from drawings by our first artists, genuine India paper proofs, and colors that will not fade.’ And then I give him a broadside. The father is overpowered! The squabble ends in a subscription.

“ ‘No one but Gaudissart can play that game,’ cried little tomtit Laniard to that long noodle Bulot when he told him the story at the café.

“Tomorrow I am off to Amboise. I shall do Amboise in two days, and write next from Tours, where I am going to try my hand on the deadliest country from the point of view of intelligence and speculation. But on the honor of Gaudissart, they will be done, they shall be done! Done brown! By-bye, little one; love me long, and be true to me. Fidelity through thick and thin is one of the characteristics of the free woman. Who kisses your eyes?

Five days later Gaudissart set out one morning from the Faisan hotel, where he put up at Tours, and went to Vouvray, a rich and populous district where the public mind seemed to him to be open to conviction. He was trotting along the river quay on his nag, thinking no more of the speeches he was about to make than an actor thinks of the part he has played a hundred times. Gaudissart the Great cantered on, admiring the landscape, and thinking of nothing, never dreaming that the happy valleys of Vouvray were to witness the overthrow of his commercial infallibility.

It will here be necessary to give the reader some insight into the public spirit of Touraine. The peculiar wit of a sly romancer, full of banter and epigram, which stamps every page of Rabelais’ work, is the faithful expression of the Tourangeau nature, of an intellect as keen and polished as it must inevitably be in a province where the kings of France long held their court; an ardent, artistic, poetical, and luxurious nature, but prompt to forget its first impulse. The softness of the atmosphere, the beauty of the climate, a certain ease of living and simplicity of manners, soon stifle the feeling for art, narrow the most expansive heart, and corrode the most tenacious will.

Transplant the native of Touraine, and his qualities develop and lead to great things, as has been proved in the most dissimilar ways, by Rabelais and by Semblançay; by Plantin the printer and by Descartes; by Boucicault, the Napoleon of his day; by Pinaigrier, who painted the greater part of our Cathedral glass; by Verville and Courier. But, left at home, the countryman of Touraine, so remarkable elsewhere, remains like the Indian on his rug, like the Turk on his divan. He uses his wit to make fun of his neighbor, to amuse himself, and to live happy to the end of his days. Touraine is the true Abbey of Thelema, so much praised in Gargantua’s book. Consenting nuns may be found there, as in the poet’s dream, and the good cheer sung so loudly by Rabelais is supreme.

As to his indolence, it is sublime, and well characterized in the popular witticism: “Tourangeau, will you have some broth?”—“Yes.”—“Then bring your bowl.”—“I am no longer hungry.”

Is it to the glee of the vinedresser, to the harmonious beauty of the loveliest scenery in France, or to the perennial peace of a province which has always escaped the invading armies of the foreigner, that the soft indifference of those mild and easy habits is due? To this question there is no answer. Go yourself to that Turkey in France, and there you will stay, indolent, idle, and happy. Though you were as ambitious as Napoleon, or a poet like Byron, an irresistible, indescribable influence would compel you to keep your poetry to yourself, and reduce your most ambitious schemes to daydreams.

Gaudissart the Great was fated to meet in Vouvray one of those indigenous wags whose mockery is offensive only by its absolute perfection of fun, and with whom he had a deadly battle. Rightly or wrongly, your Tourangeau likes to come into his father’s property. Hence the doctrines of Saint-Simon were held particularly odious, and heartily abused in those parts; still, only as things are hated and abused in Touraine, with the disdain and lofty pleasantry worthy of the land of good stories and jokes played between neighbors—a spirit which is vanishing day by day before what Lord Byron called English Cant.

After putting up his horse at the Soleil d’Or, kept by one Mitouflet, a discharged Grenadier of the Imperial Guard, who had married a wealthy mistress of vinelands, and to whose care he solemnly confided his steed, Gaudissart, for his sins, went first to the prime wit of Vouvray, the life and soul of the district, the jester whose reputation and nature alike made it incumbent on him to keep his neighbor’s spirits up. This rustic Figaro, a retired dyer, was the happy possessor of seven or eight thousand francs a year, of a pretty house on the slope of a hill, of a plump little wife, and of robust health. For ten years past he had had nothing to do but to take care of his garden and his wife, to get his daughter married, to play his game of an evening, to keep himself informed of all the scandal that came within his jurisdiction, to give trouble at elections, to squabble with the great landowners, and arrange big dinners; to air himself on the quay, inquire what was going on in the town, and bother the priest; and, for dramatic interest, to look out for the sale of a plot of ground that cut into the ring fence of his vineyard. In short, he lived the life of Touraine, the life of a small country town.

At the same time, he was the most important of the minor notabilities of the place, and the leader of the small proprietors—a jealous and envious class, chewing the cud of slander and calumny against the aristocracy, and repeating them with relish, grinding everything down to one level, hostile to every form of superiority, scorning it indeed, with the admirable coolness of ignorance.

Monsieur Vernier—so this little great man of the place was named—was finishing his breakfast, between his wife and his daughter, when Gaudissart made his appearance in the dining-room—one of the most cheerful dining-rooms for miles round, with a view from the windows over the Loire and the Cher.

“Is it to Monsieur Vernier himself that I have the honor—?” said the traveler, bending his vertebral column with so much grace that it seemed to be elastic.

“Yes, monsieur,” said the wily dyer, interrupting him with a scrutinizing glance, by which he at once took the measure of the man he had to do with.

“I have come, monsieur,” Gaudissart went on, “to request the assistance of your enlightenment to direct me in this district where, as I learn from Mitouflet, you exert the greatest influence. I am an emissary, monsieur, to this Department in behalf of an undertaking of the highest importance, backed by bankers who are anxious—”

“Anxious to swindle us!” said Vernier, laughing, long since used to deal with the commercial traveler and to follow his game.

“Just so,” replied Gaudissart the Great with perfect impudence. “But, as you very well know, sir, since you are so clear-sighted, people are not to be swindled unless they think it to their interest to allow themselves to be swindled. I beg you will not take me for one of the common ruck of commercial gentlemen who trust to cunning or importunity to win success. I am no longer a traveler; I was one, monsieur, and I glory in it. But I have now a mission of supreme importance, which ought to make every man of superior mind regard me as devoted to the enlightenment of his fellow-countrymen. Be kind enough to hear me, monsieur, and you will find that you will have profited greatly by the half hour’s conversation I beg you to grant me. The great Paris bankers have not merely lent their names to this concern, as to certain discreditable speculations such as I call mere rattraps. No, no, nothing of the kind. I can assure you, I would never allow myself to engage in promoting such booby-traps. No, monsieur, the soundest and most respectable houses in Paris are concerned in the undertaking, both as shareholders and as guarantors—”

And Gaudissart unrolled the frippery of his phrases, while Monsieur Vernier listened with an affectation of interest that quite deceived the orator. But at the word guarantor, Vernier had, in fact, ceased to heed this bagman’s rhetoric; he was bent on playing him some sly trick, so as to clear off this kind of Parisian caterpillar, once for all, from a district justly regarded as barbarian by speculators, who can get no footing there.

At the head of a delightful valley, known as the Vallée coquette, from its curves and bends, new at every step, and each more charming than the last, whether you go up or down the winding slope, there dwelt, in a little house surrounded by a vineyard, a more than half-crazy creature named Margaritis. This man, an Italian by birth, was married, but had no children, and his wife took care of him with a degree of courage that was universally admired; for Madame Margaritis certainly ran some risk in living with a man who, among other manias, insisted on always having two long knives about him, not unfrequently threatening her with them. But who does not know the admirable devotion with which country people care for afflicted creatures, perhaps in consequence of the discredit that attaches to a middle-class wife if she abandons her child or her husband to the tender mercies of a public asylum? Again, the aversion is well known which country folks feel for paying a hundred louis, or perhaps a thousand crowns, the price charged at Charenton or in a private asylum. If anyone spoke to Madame Margaritis of Dubuisson, Esquirol, Blanche, or other mad-doctors, she preferred, with lofty indignation, to keep her three thousand francs and her goodman.

The inexplicable caprices of this worthy’s insanity being closely connected with the course of my story, it is needful to mention some of his more conspicuous vagaries. Margaritis would always go out as soon as it began to rain, to walk bareheaded among his vines. Indoors he was perpetually asking for the newspaper; just to satisfy him, his wife or the maidservant would give him an old Journal d’Indre-et-Loire and for seven years he had never discovered that it was always the same copy. A doctor might perhaps have found it interesting to note the connection between his attacks of asking for the paper and the variations in the weather. The poor madman’s constant occupation was to study the state of the sky and its effect on the vines.

When his wife had company, which was almost every evening—for the neighbors, in pity for her position, came in to play boston with her—Margaritis sat in silence in a corner, never moving; but when ten o’clock struck by a clock in a tall wooden case, he rose at the last stroke with the mechanical precision of the figures moved by a spring in a German toy, went slowly up to the cardplayers, looked at them with eyes strangely like the automatic gaze of the Greeks and Turks to be seen in the Boulevard du Temple in Paris, and said, “Go away!”

At times, however, this man recovered his natural wits, and could then advise his wife very shrewdly as to the sale of her wine; but at those times he was exceedingly troublesome, stealing dainties out of the cupboards and eating them in secret.

Occasionally when the customary visitors came in, he answered their inquiries civilly, but he more often replied quite at random. To a lady who asked him, “How are you today, Monsieur Margaritis?”—“I have shaved,” he would reply, “and you?”

“Are you better, monsieur?” another would say. “Jerusalem! Jerusalem!” was the answer. But he usually looked at them with a blank face, not speaking a word, and then his wife would say, “The goodman cannot hear anything today.” Twice or thrice in the course of five years, always about the time of the equinox, he had flown into a rage at this remark, had drawn a knife, and shrieked, “That hussy disgraces me!”

Still, he drank, ate, and walked out like any man in perfect health; and by degrees everyone was accustomed to pay him no more respect or attention than if he had been a clumsy piece of furniture.

Of all his eccentricities, there was one to which no one had ever been able to discover a clue; for the wise heads of the district had in the course of time accounted for, or explained, most of the poor lunatic’s maddest acts. He insisted on always having a sack of flour in the house, and on keeping two casks of wine from the vintage, never allowing anyone to touch either the flour or the wine. But when the month of June came round, he began to be anxious to sell the sack and the wine-barrels with all the fretfulness of a madman. Madame Margaritis generally told him that she had sold the two puncheons at an exorbitant price, and gave him the money, which he then hid without his wife or his servant ever having succeeded, even by watching, in discovering the hiding-place.

The day before Gaudissart’s visit to Vouvray, Madame Margaritis had had more difficulty than ever in managing her husband, who had an attack of lucid reason.

“I declare I do not know how I shall get through tomorrow,” said she to Madame Vernier. “Only fancy, my old man insisted on seeing his two casks of wine. And he gave me no peace all day till I showed him two full puncheons. Our neighbor, Pierre Champlain, luckily had two casks he had not been able to sell, and at my request he rolled them into our cellar. And then what must he want, after seeing the casks, but nothing will content him but selling them himself.”

Madame Vernier had just been telling her husband of this difficult state of things when Gaudissart walked in. At the commercial traveler’s very first words Vernier determined to let him loose on old Margaritis.

“Monsieur,” replied the dyer, when Gaudissart the Great had exhausted his first broadside, “I will not conceal from you that your undertaking will meet with great obstacles in this district. In our part of the world the good folks go on, bodily, in a way of their own; it is a country where no new idea can ever take root. We live as our fathers did, amusing ourselves by eating four meals a day, occupying ourselves by looking after our vineyards, and selling our wine at a good price. Our notion of business is, very honestly, to sell things for more than they cost. We shall go on in that rut, and neither God nor the devil can get us out of it. But I will give you some good advice, and good advice is worth an eye. We have in this neighborhood a retired banker, in whose judgment I myself have the utmost confidence, and if you win his support you shall have mine. If your proposals offer any substantial prospects, and we are convinced of it, Monsieur Margaritis’ vote carries mine with it, and there are twenty well-to-do houses in Vouvray where purses will be opened and your panacea will be tried.”

As she heard him mention the madman, Madame Vernier looked up at her husband.

“By the way, I believe my wife was just going to call on Madame Margaritis with a neighbor of ours. Wait a minute, and the ladies will show you the way.—You can go round and pick up Madame Fontanier,” said the old dyer with a wink at his wife.

This suggestion that she should take with her the merriest, the most voluble, the most facetious of all the merry wives of Vouvray, was as much as to tell Madame Vernier to secure a witness to report the scene which would certainly take place between the bagman and the lunatic, so as to amuse the country with it for a month to come. Monsieur and Madame Vernier played their parts so well that Gaudissart had no suspicions, and rushed headlong into the snare. He politely offered his arm to Madame Vernier, and fancied he had quite made a conquest of both ladies on the way, being dazzlingly witty, and pelting them with waggery and puns which they did not understand.

The so-called banker lived in the first house at the opening into the Vallée coquette. It was called La Fuye, and was not particularly remarkable. On the ground floor was a large paneled sitting-room, with a bedroom on each side for the master and mistress. The entrance was through a hall, where they dined, opening into the kitchen. This ground floor, quite lacking the external elegance for which even the humblest dwellings in Touraine are noted, was crowned by attics, to which an outside stair led up, built against one of the gable ends, and covered by a lean-to roof. A small garden, full of marigolds, seringa, and elder, divided the house from the vineyard. Round the courtyard were the buildings for the winepresses and storage.

Margaritis, seated in a yellow Utrecht velvet chair by the window in the drawing-room, did not rise as the ladies came in with Gaudissart; he was thinking of the sale of his butts of wine. He was a lean man, with a pear-shaped head, bald above the forehead, and furnished with a few hairs at the back. His deep-set eyes, shaded by thick black brows, and with dark rings round them, his nose as thin as the blade of a knife, his high cheekbones and hollow cheeks, his generally oblong outline—everything, down to his absurdly long flat chin, contributed to give a strange look to his countenance, suggesting that of a professor of rhetoric—or of a ragpicker.

“Monsieur Margaritis,” said Madame Vernier, “come, wake up! Here is a gentleman sent to you by my husband, and you are to hear him with attention. Put aside your mathematical calculations and talk to him.”

At this speech the madman rose, looked at Gaudissart, waved to him to be seated, and said:

“Let us talk, monsieur.”

The three women went into Madame Margaritis’ room, leaving the door open so as to hear all that went on, and intervene in case of need. Hardly were they seated when Monsieur Vernier came in quietly from the vineyard, and made them let him in through the window without a sound.

“You were in business, monsieur?” Gaudissart began.

“Public business,” replied Margaritis, interrupting him. “I pacified Calabria when Murat was King.”

“Heyday, he has been in Calabria now!” said Vernier in a whisper.

“Oh, indeed!” said Gaudissart. “Then, monsieur, we cannot fail to come to an understanding.”

“I am listening,” replied Margaritis, settling himself in the attitude of a man sitting for his portrait.

“Monsieur,” said Gaudissart, fidgeting with his watch key, which he twisted round and round without thinking of what he was doing, with a regular rotary twirl which engaged the madman’s attention, and perhaps helped to keep him quiet; “monsieur, if you were not a man of superior intelligence”—Margaritis bowed—“I should restrict myself to setting forth the material advantages of this concern; but its psychological value is worthy of your attention. Mark me! Of all forms of social wealth, time is the most precious; to save time is to grow rich, is it not? Now is there anything which takes up more time in our lives than anxiety as to what I may call boiling the pot—a homely metaphor, but clearly stating the question? Or is there anything which consumes more time than the lack of a guarantee to offer as security to those of whom you ask money when, though impecunious for a time, you yet are rich in prospects?”

“Money—you have come to the point.”

“Well, then, monsieur, I am the emissary to the departments of a company of bankers and capitalists, who have perceived what enormous loss of time, and consequently of productive intelligence and activity, is thus entailed on men with the future before them. Now, the idea has occurred to us that, to such men, we may capitalize the future, we may discount their talents, by discounting what?—why, their time, and securing its value to their heirs. This is not merely to economize time; it is to price it, to value it, to represent in a pecuniary form the products you may expect to obtain in a certain unknown time by representing the moral qualities with which you are gifted, and which are, monsieur, a living force, like a waterfall, or a steam engine of three, ten, twenty, fifty horsepower. This is progress, a great movement towards a better order of things, a movement due to the energy of our age—an essentially progressive age, as I can prove to you when we come to the conception of a more logical coordination of social interests.

“I will explain myself by tangible instances. I quit the purely abstract argument which we, in our line, call the mathematics of ideas. Supposing that instead of being a man of property, living on your dividends, you are a painter, a musician, a poet—”

“I am a painter,” the other put in by way of parenthesis.

“Very good, so be it, since you take my metaphor; you are a painter, you have a great future before you. But I am going further—”

At those words the lunatic studied Gaudissart uneasily to see if he meant to go away, but was reassured on seeing him remain seated.

“You are nothing at all,” Gaudissart went on, “but you feel yourself—”

“I feel myself,” said Margaritis.

“You say to yourself, ‘I shall be a Minister’; very good. You, the painter, you, the artist, the man of letters, the future Minister, you calculate your prospects, you value them at so much—you estimate them, let us say—at a hundred thousand crowns—”

“And you have brought me a hundred thousand crowns?” said the lunatic.

“Yes, monsieur, you will see. Either your heirs will get them without fail, in the event of your death, since the company pledges itself to pay, or, if you live, you get them by your works of art or your fortunate speculations. Nay, if you have made a mistake, you can begin all over again. But, when once you have fixed the value, as I have had the honor of explaining to you, of your intellectual capital—for it is intellectual capital, bear that clearly in mind, monsieur—”

“I understand,” said the madman.

“You sign a policy of insurance with this company, which credits you with the value of a hundred thousand francs—you, the painter—”

“I am a painter,” said Margaritis.

“You, the musician, the Minister—and promises to pay that sum to your family, your heirs, if, in consequence of your demise, the hopes of the income to be derived from your intellectual capital should be lost. The payment of the premium is thus all that is needed to consolidate your—”

“Your cashbox,” said the madman, interrupting him.

“Well, of course, monsieur; I see that you understand business.”

“Yes,” said Margaritis, “I was the founder of the Banque Territoriale, Rue des Fossés-Montmartre in Paris, in 1798.”

“For,” Gaudissart went on, “in order to repay the intellectual capital with which each of us credits himself, must not all who insure pay a certain premium—three percent, annually three percent? And thus, by paying a very small sum, a mere nothing, you are protecting your family against the disastrous effects of your death.”

“But I am alive,” objected the lunatic.

“Ah, yes, and if you live to be old—that is the objection commonly raised, the objection of the vulgar, and you must see that if we had not anticipated and annihilated it, we should be unworthy to become—what? What are we, in fact?—The bookkeepers of the Great Bank of Intellect.

“Monsieur, I do not say this to you; but wherever I go, I meet with men who pretend to teach something new, to bring forward some fresh argument against those who have grown pale with studying the business—on my word of honor, it is contemptible! However, the world is made so, and I have no hope of reforming it.—Your objection, monsieur, is absurd—”

“Quésaco?”2 said Margaritis.

“For this reason. If you should live, and if you have the money credited to you in your policy of insurance against the chances of death—you follow me—”

“I follow.”

“Well, then, it is because you have succeeded in your undertakings! And you will have succeeded solely in consequence of that policy of insurance; for, by ridding yourself of all the anxieties which are involved in having a wife at your heels, and children whom your death may reduce to beggary, you simply double your chances of success. If you are at the top of the tree, you have grasped the intellectual capital compared with which the insurance money is a trifle, a mere trifle.”

“An admirable idea!”

“Is it not, monsieur?—I call this beneficent institution the Mutual Insurance against beggary!—or, if you prefer it, the Office for discounting Talent. For talent, sir, talent is a bill of exchange, bestowed by Nature on a man of genius, and which is often at long date—ha, hah!”

“Very handsome usury,” cried Margaritis.

“The deuce! He is sharp enough, this old boy! I have made a mistake; I must attack this man on higher ground with palaver A 1,” thought Gaudissart.—“Not at all, monsieur,” said he aloud. “To you who—”

“Will you take a glass of wine?” asked Margaritis.

“With pleasure,” said Gaudissart.

“Wife! give us a bottle of the wine of which two casks are left.—You are here in the headquarters of Vouvray,” said the master, pointing to his vines. “The clos Margaritis.”

The maid brought in glasses and a bottle of the wine of 1819. The worthy lunatic filled a glass with scrupulous care, and solemnly presented it to Gaudissart, who drank it.

“But you are playing me some trick, monsieur,” said the commercial traveler. “This is Madeira, genuine Madeira!”

“I should think it is!” replied the lunatic. “The only fault of the Vouvray wine, monsieur, is that it cannot be used as an ordinaire, as a table wine. It is too generous, too strong; and it is sold in Paris as Madeira after being doctored with brandy. Our wine is so rich that many of the Paris merchants, when the French crop is insufficient for Holland and Belgium, buy our wine to mix with the wine grown about Paris, and so manufacture a Bordeaux wine.—But what you are drinking at this moment, my dear and very amiable sir, is fit for a king; it is the head of Vouvray. I have two casks, only two casks of it. Persons who appreciate the finest wines, high-class wines, and like to put a wine on their table which has a character not to be met with in the regular trade, apply direct to us. Now, do you happen to know anyone—”

“Let us go back to our business,” said Gaudissart.

“We are there, monsieur,” replied the madman. “My wine is heady, and you are talking of capital; the etymology of capital is caput—head.—Heh?—The Head of Vouvray—the connection is obvious.”

“As I was saying,” persisted Gaudissart, “either you have realized your intellectual capital—”

“I have realized, monsieur.—Will you take my two puncheons? I will give you favorable terms.”

“No” said Gaudissart the Great, “I allude to the insurance of intellectual capital and policies on life. I will resume the thread of my argument.”

The madman grew calmer, sat down, and looked at Gaudissart.

“I was saying, monsieur, that if you should die, the capital is paid over to your family without difficulty.”

“Without difficulty.”

“Yes, excepting in the case of suicide—”

“A question for the law.”

“No, sir. As you know, suicide is an act that is always easily proved.”

“In France,” said Margaritis. “But—”

“But abroad,” said Gaudissart. “Well, monsieur, to conclude that part of the question, I may say at once that death abroad, or on the field of battle, are not included—”

“What do you insure, then? Nothing whatever,” cried the other. “Now, my bank was based on—”

“Nothing whatever, sir?” cried Gaudissart, interrupting him. “Nothing whatever? How about illness, grief, poverty, and the passions? But we need not discuss exceptional cases.”

“No, we will not discuss them,” said the madman.

“What, then, is the upshot of this transaction?” exclaimed Gaudissart. “To you, as a banker, I will simply state the figures.—You have a man, a man with a future, well dressed, living on his art—he wants money, he asks for it—a blank. Civilization at large will refuse to advance money to this man, who, in thought, dominates over civilization, who will some day dominate over it by his brush, his chisel, by words, or ideas, or a system. Civilization is merciless. She has no bread for the great men who provide her with luxuries; she feeds them on abuse and mockery, the gilded slut! The expression is a strong one; but I will not retract it.—Well, your misprized great man comes to us; we recognize his greatness, we bow to him respectfully, we listen to him, and he says to us:

“ ‘Gentlemen of the Insurance Company, my life is worth so much; I will pay you so much percent on my works’—Well, what do we do? At once, without grudging, we admit him to the splendid banquet of civilization as an important guest—”

“Then you must have wine,” said the madman.

“As an important guest. He signs his policy, he takes our contemptible paper rags—mere miserable rags, which, rags as they are, have more power than his genius had. For, in fact, if he wants money, everybody on seeing that sheet of paper is ready to lend to him. On the Bourse, at the bankers’, anywhere, even at the moneylenders’, he can get money—because he can offer security.—Well, sir, was not this a gulf that needed filling in the social system?

“But, sir, this is but a part of the business undertaken by the Life Insurance Company. We also insure debtors on a different scale of premiums. We offer annuities on terms graduated by age, on an infinitely more favorable calculation than has as yet been allowed in tontines based on tables of mortality now known to be inaccurate. Our Society operating on the mass, our annuitants need have no fear of the reflections that sadden their latter years, in themselves sad enough; such thoughts as must necessarily invade them when their money is in private hands. So, you see, monsieur, we have taken the measure of life under every aspect—”

“Sucked it at every pore,” said Margaritis.—“But take a glass of wine; you have certainly earned it. You must lay some velvet on your stomach if you want to keep your jaw in working order. And the wine of Vouvray, monsieur, is, when old enough, pure velvet.”

“And what do you think of it all?” said Gaudissart, emptying his glass.

“It is all very fine, very new, very advantageous; but I think better of the system of loans on land that was in use in my bank in the Rue des Fossés-Montmartre.”

“There you are right, monsieur,” said Gaudissart, “that has been worked and worked out, done and done again. We now have the Mortgage Society which lends on real estate, and works that system on a large scale. But is not that a mere trifle in comparison with our idea of consolidating possibilities. Consolidating hopes, coagulating—financially—each man’s desires for wealth, and securing their realization. It remained for our age, sir, an age of transition—of transition and progress combined!”

“Ay, of progress,” said the lunatic. “I like progress, especially such as brings good times for the wine trade—”

“The Times—le Temps—!” exclaimed Gaudissart, not heeding the madman’s meaning. “A poor paper, sir; if you take it in, I pity you.”

“The newspaper?” cried Margaritis. “To be sure, I am devoted to the newspaper.—Wife, wife! where is the newspaper?” he went on, turning towards the door.

“Very good, monsieur; if you take an interest in the papers, we shall certainly agree.”

“Yes, yes; but before you hear the paper, confess that this wine is—”

“Delicious,” said Gaudissart.

“Come on, then, we will finish the bottle between us.” The madman a quarter filled his own glass, and poured out a bumper for Gaudissart.

“As I say, sir, I have two casks of that very wine. If you think it is good, and are disposed to deal—”

“The fathers of the Saint-Simonian doctrine have, in fact, commissioned me to forward them such products as—But let me tell you of their splendid newspaper. You, who understand the insurance business, and are ready to help me to extend it in this district—”

“Certainly,” said Margaritis, “if—”

“Of course, if I take your wine. And your wine is very good, monsieur; it goes to the spot.”

“Champagne is made of it. There is a gentleman here, from Paris, who has come to make champagne at Tours.”

“I quite believe it.—The Globe, which you must have heard mentioned—”

“I know it well,” said Margaritis.

“I was sure of it” said Gaudissart. “Monsieur, you have a powerful head—a bump which is known as the equine head. There is something of the horse in the head of every great man. Now a man can be a genius and live unknown. It is a trick that has happened often enough to men who, in spite of their talents, live in obscurity, and which nearly befell the great Saint-Simon and Monsieur Vico, a man of mark who is making his way. He is coming on well is Vico, and I am glad. Here we enter on the new theory and formula of the human race. Attention, monsieur—”

“Attention!” echoed Margaritis.

“The oppression of man by man ought to have ended, monsieur, on the day when Christ—I do not say Jesus Christ, I say Christ—came to proclaim the equality of men before God. But has not this equality been hitherto the most illusory chimera?—Now, Saint-Simon supplements Christ. Christ has served His time—”

“Then, is He released?” asked Margaritis.

“He has served His time from the point of view of Liberalism. There is something stronger to guide us now—the new creed, free and individual creativeness, social coordination by which each one shall receive his social reward equitably, in accordance with his work, and no longer be the hireling of individuals who, incapable themselves, make all labor for the benefit of one alone. Hence the doctrine—”

“And what becomes of the servants?” asked Margaritis.

“They remain servants, monsieur, if they are only capable of being servants.”

“Then of what use is the doctrine?”

“Oh, to judge of that, monsieur, you must take your stand on the highest point of view whence you can clearly command a general prospect of humanity. This brings us to Ballanche! Do you know Monsieur Ballanche?”

“It is my principal business,” said the madman, who misunderstood the name for la planche.3

“Very good,” said Gaudissart. “Then, sir, if the palingenesis and successive developments of the spiritualized Globe touch you, delight you, appeal to you—then, my dear sir, the newspaper called the Globe, a fine name, accurately expressing its mission—the Globe is the cicerone who will explain to you every morning the fresh conditions under which, in quite a short time, the world will undergo a political and moral change.”

“Quésaco?” said Margaritis.

“I will explain the argument by a simile,” said Gaudissart. “If, as children, our nurses took us to Séraphin, do not we older men need a presentment of the future?—These gentlemen—”

“Do they drink wine?”

“Yes, monsieur. Their house is established, I may say, on an admirable footing—a prophetic footing; handsome receptions, all the bigwigs, splendid parties.”

“To be sure,” said the madman, “the laborers who pull down must be fed as well as those who build.”

“All the more so, monsieur, when they pull down with one hand and build up with the other, as the apostles of the Globe do.”

“Then they must have wine, the wine of Vouvray; the two casks I have left—three hundred bottles for a hundred francs—a mere song!”

“How much a bottle does that come to?” said Gaudissart. “Let us see; there is the carriage, and the town dues—not seven sous—a very good bargain.” (“I have caught my man,” thought Gaudissart. “You want to sell me the wine which I want, and I can get the whip hand of you.”) “They pay more for other wine,” he went on. “Well, monsieur, men who haggle are sure to agree.—Speak honestly; you have considerable influence in the district?”

“I believe so,” said the madman. “The head of Vouvray, you see.”

“Well, and you perfectly understand the working of the Intellectual Capital Insurance?”

“Perfectly.”

“You have realized the vast proportions of the Globe?”

“Twice—on foot.”

Gaudissart did not heed him; he was entangled in the maze of his own thoughts, and listening to his own words, assured of success.

“Well, seeing the position you hold, I can understand that at your age you have nothing to insure. But, monsieur, you can persuade those persons in this district to insure who, either by their personal merits or by the precarious position of their families, may be anxious to provide for the future. And so, if you will subscribe to the Globe, and if you will give me the support of your authority in this district to invite the investment of capital in annuities—for annuities are popular in the provinces—well, we may come to an agreement as to the purchase of the two casks of wine.—Will you take in the Globe?”

“I live on the globe.”

“Will you support me with the influential residents in the district?”

“I support—”

“And—”

“And?—”

“And I—But you will pay your subscription to the Globe?”

“The Globe—a good paper—an annuity?”

“An annuity, monsieur?—Well, yes, you are right; for it is full of life, of vitality, and learning; choke full of learning; a handsome paper, well printed, a good color, thick paper. Oh, it is none of your flimsy shoddy, mere wastepaper that tears if you look at it. And it goes deep, gives you reasoning that you may think over at leisure, and pleasant occupation here in the depths of the country.”

“That is the thing for me,” said the madman.

“It costs a mere trifle—eighty francs a year.”

“That is not the thing for me,” said Margaritis.

“Monsieur,” said Gaudissart, “of course you have little children?”

“Some,” said Margaritis, who misunderstood have for love.

“Well, then, the Journal des Enfants, seven francs a year—”

“Buy my two casks of wine,” said Margaritis, “and I will subscribe to your children’s paper; that is the thing for me; a fine idea. Intellectual tyranny—a child—heh? Does not man tyrannize over man?”

“Right you are,” said Gaudissart.

“Right I am.”

“And you consent to steer me round the district?”

“Round the district.”

“I have your approbation?”

“You have.”

“Well, then, sir, I will take your two casks of wine at a hundred francs—”

“No, no, a hundred and ten.”

“Monsieur, a hundred and ten, I will say a hundred and ten, but it is a hundred and ten to the gentlemen of the paper and one hundred to me. If I find you a buyer, you owe me a commission.”

“A hundred and twenty to them. No commission to the commissioners.”

“Very neat. And not only witty, but spirited.”

“No, spirituous.”

“Better and better—like Nicolet.”

“That is my way,” said the lunatic. “Come and look at my vineyards?”

“With pleasure,” said Gaudissart. “That wine goes strangely to the head.”

And Gaudissart the Great went out with Monsieur Margaritis, who led him from terrace to terrace, from vine to vine.

The three ladies and Monsieur Vernier could laugh now at their ease, as they saw the two men from the window gesticulating, haranguing, standing still, and going on again, talking vehemently.

“Why did your good man take him out of hearing?” said Vernier. At last Margaritis came in again with the commercial traveler; they were both walking at a great pace as if in a hurry to conclude the business.

“And the countryman, I bet, has been too many for the Parisian,” said Vernier.

In point of fact, Gaudissart the Great, sitting at one end of the card-table, to the great delight of Margaritis, wrote an order for the delivery of two casks of wine. Then, after reading through the contract, Margaritis paid him down seven francs as a subscription to the children’s paper.

“Till tomorrow, then, monsieur,” said Gaudissart the Great, twisting his watch-key; “I shall have the honor of calling for you tomorrow. You can send the wine to Paris direct to the address I have given you, and forward it as soon as you receive the money.”

Gaudissart was from Normandy; there were two sides to every bargain he made, and he required an agreement from Monsieur Margaritis, who with a madman’s glee in gratifying his favorite whim, signed, after reading, a contract to deliver two casks of wine of Clos Margaritis.

So Gaudissart went off in high spirits, humming “Le roi des mers, prends plus bas,” to the Golden Sun Inn, where he naturally had a chat with the host while waiting for dinner. Mitouflet was an old soldier, simple but cunning, as peasants are, but never laughing at a joke, as being a man who is accustomed to the roar of cannon, and to passing a jest in the ranks.

“You have some very tough customers hereabouts,” said Gaudissart, leaning against the doorpost and lighting his cigar at Mitouflet’s pipe.

“How is that?” asked Mitouflet.

“Well, men who ride roughshod over political and financial theories.”

“Whom have you been talking to, if I may make so bold?” asked the innkeeper guilelessly, while he skilfully expectorated after the manner of smokers.

“To a wideawake chap named Margaritis.”

Mitouflet glanced at his customer, twice, with calm irony.

“Oh yes, he is wideawake, no doubt! He knows too much for most people; they don’t follow him—”

“I can quite believe it. He has a thorough knowledge of the higher branches of finance.”

“Yes, indeed,” said Mitouflet; “and for my part, I have always thought it a pity that he should be mad.”

“Mad? How?”

“How? Why, mad, as a madman is mad,” repeated the innkeeper. “But he is not dangerous, and his wife looks after him.—So you understand each other? That’s funny,” said the relentless Mitouflet, with the utmost calm.

“Funny?” cried Gaudissart. “Funny? But your precious Monsieur Vernier was making a fool of me!”

“Did he send you there?” said Mitouflet.

“Yes.”

“I say, wife,” cried the innkeeper, “listen to that! Monsieur Vernier actually sent monsieur to talk to old Margaritis—”

“And what did you find to say to each other, my good gentleman,” said the woman, “since he is quite mad?”

“He sold me two casks of wine.”

“And you bought them?”

“Yes.”

“But it is his mania to want to sell wine; he has none.”

“Very good!” cried the bagman. “In the first place, I will go and thank Monsieur Vernier.”

Gaudissart, boiling with rage, went off to the house of the ex-dyer, whom he found in his parlor laughing with the neighbors, to whom he was already telling the story.

“Monsieur,” said the Prince of Bagmen, his eyes glaring with wrath, “you are a sneak and a blackguard; and if you are not the lowest of turnkeys—a class I rank below the convicts—you will give me satisfaction for the insult you have done me by placing me in the power of a man whom you knew to be mad. Do you hear me, Monsieur Vernier, the dyer?”

This was the speech Gaudissart had prepared, as a tragedian prepares his entrance on the stage.

“What next?” retorted Vernier, encouraged by the presence of his neighbors. “Do you think we have not good right to make game of a gentleman who arrives at Vouvray with an air and a flourish, to get our money out of us under pretence of being great men—painters, or verse-mongers—and who thus gratuitously places us on a level with a penniless horde, out at elbows, homeless and roofless? What have we done to deserve it, we who are fathers of families? A rogue, who asks us to subscribe to the Globe, a paper which preaches as the first law of God, if you please, that a man shall not inherit what his father and mother can leave him? On my sacred word of honor, old Margaritis can talk more sense than that.

“And, after all, what have you to complain of? You were quite of a mind, you and he. These gentlemen can bear witness that if you had speechified to all the people in the countryside you would not have been so well understood.”

“That is all very well to say, but I consider myself insulted, monsieur, and I expect satisfaction.”

“Very good, sir; I consider you insulted if that will be any comfort to you, and I will not give you satisfaction, for there is not satisfaction enough in the whole silly business for me to give you any. Is he absurd, I ask you?”

At these words Gaudissart rushed on the dyer to give him a blow; but the Vouvrillons were on the alert, and threw themselves between them, so that Gaudissart the Great only hit the dyer’s wig, which flew off and alighted on the head of Mademoiselle Claire Vernier.

“If you are not satisfied now, monsieur, I shall be at the inn till tomorrow morning; you will find me there, and ready to show you what is meant by satisfaction for an insult. I fought in July, monsieur!”

“Very well,” said the dyer, “you shall fight at Vouvray; and you will stay here rather longer than you bargained for.”

Gaudissart departed, pondering on this reply, which seemed to him ominous of mischief. For the first time in his life he dined cheerlessly.

The whole borough of Vouvray was in a stir over the meeting between Gaudissart and Monsieur Vernier. A duel was a thing unheard of in this benign region.

“Monsieur Mitouflet, I am going to fight Monsieur Vernier tomorrow morning,” said Gaudissart to his host. “I know nobody here; will you be my second?”

“With pleasure,” said Mitouflet.

Gaudissart had hardly finished his dinner when Madame Fontanieu and the Mayor’s deputy came to the Golden Sun, took Mitouflet aside, and represented to him what a sad thing it would be for the whole district if a violent death should occur; they described the frightful state of affairs for good Madame Vernier, and implored him to patch the matter up so as to save the honor of the community.

“I will see to it,” said the innkeeper with a wink.

In the evening Mitouflet went up to Gaudissart’s room carrying pens, ink, and paper.

“What is all that?” asked Gaudissart.

“Well, as you are to fight tomorrow, I thought you might be glad to leave some little instructions, and that you might wish to write some letters, for we all have someone who is dear to us. Oh! that will not kill you. Are you a good fencer? Would you like to practise a little? I have some foils.”

“I should be glad to do so.”

Mitouflet fetched the foils, and two masks.

“Now, let us see.”

The innkeeper and the bagman stood on guard. Mitouflet, who had been an instructor of grenadiers, hit Gaudissart sixty-eight times, driving him back to the wall.

“The devil! you are good at the game!” said Gaudissart, out of breath.

“I am no match for Monsieur Vernier.”

“The deuce! Then I will fight with pistols.”

“I advise you to.—You see, if you use large horse pistols and load them to the muzzle, they are sure to kick and miss, and each man withdraws with unblemished honor. Leave me to arrange it. By the Mass, two good men would be great fools to kill each other for a jest.”

“Are you sure the pistols will fire wide enough? I should be sorry to kill the man,” said Gaudissart.

“Sleep easy.”

Next morning the adversaries, both rather pale, met at the foot of the Pont de la Cise.

The worthy Vernier narrowly missed killing a cow that was grazing by the roadside ten yards off.

“Ah! you fired in the air!” exclaimed Gaudissart, and with these words the enemies fell into each other’s arms.

“Monsieur,” said the traveler, “your joke was a little rough, but it was funny. I am sorry I spoke so strongly, but I was beside myself.—I hold you a man of honor.”

“Monsieur, we will get you twenty subscribers to the children’s paper,” replied the dyer, still rather pale.

“That being the case,” said Gaudissart, “why should we not breakfast together? Men who have fought are always ready to understand each other.”

“Monsieur Mitouflet,” said Gaudissart, as they went in, “there is a bailiff here, I suppose?”

“What for?”

“I mean to serve a notice on my dear little Monsieur Margaritis, requiring him to supply me with two casks of his wine.”

“But he has none,” said Vernier.

“Well, monsieur, I will say no more about it for an indemnity of twenty francs. But I will not have it said in your town that you stole a march on Gaudissart the Great.”

Madame Margaritis, afraid of an action, which the plaintiff would certainly gain, brought the twenty francs to the clement bagman, who was also spared the pains of any further propaganda in one of the most jovial districts of France, and at the same time the least open to new ideas.

On his return from his tour in the southern provinces, Gaudissart the Great was traveling in the coupé of the Laffite-Caillard diligence, and had for a fellow-passenger a young man to whom, having passed Angoulême, he condescended to expatiate on the mysteries of life, fancying him, no doubt, but a baby.

On reaching Vouvray, the youth exclaimed:

“What a lovely situation!”

“Yes, monsieur,” said Gaudissart, “but the land is uninhabitable by reason of the inhabitants. You would have a duel on your hands every day. Why only three months ago I fought on that very spot”—and he pointed to the bridge—“with a confounded dyer—pistols; but—I fleeced him!”