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
