Anselme Popinot went down the Rue Saint-Honore and rushed along the Rue des Deux-Ecus to seize upon a young man whom his commercial /second-sight/ pointed out to him as the principal instrument of his future fortune. Popinot the judge had once done a great service to the cleverest of all commercial travellers, to him whose triumphant loquacity and activity were to win him, in coming years, the title of The Illustrious. Devoted especially to the hat-trade and the /article-
Paris/, this prince of travellers was called, at the time of which we write, purely and simply, Gaudissart. At the age of twenty-two he was already famous by the power of his commercial magnetism. In those days he was slim, with a joyous eye, expressive face, unwearied memory, and a glance that guessed the wants of every one; and he deserved to be, what in fact he became, the king of commercial travellers, the /Frenchman par excellence/. A few days earlier Popinot had met Gaudissart, who mentioned that he was on the point of departure; the hope of finding him still in Paris sent the lover flying into the Rue des Deux-Ecus, where he learned that the traveller had engaged his place at the Messageries-Royales. To bid adieu to his beloved capital, Gaudissart had gone to see a new piece at the Vaudeville; Popinot resolved to wait for him. Was it not drawing a cheque on fortune to entrust the launching of the oil of nuts to this incomparable steersman of mercantile inventions, already petted and courted by the richest firms? Popinot had reason to feel sure of Gaudissart. The commercial traveller, so knowing in the art of entangling that most wary of human beings, the little provincial trader, had himself become entangled in the first conspiracy attempted against the Bourbons after the Hundred Days. Gaudissart, to whom the open firmament of heaven was indispensable, found himself shut up in prison, under the weight of an accusation for a capital offence. Popinot the judge, who presided at the trial, released him on the ground that it was nothing worse than his imprudent folly which had mixed him up in the affair. A judge anxious to please the powers in office, or a rabid royalist, would have sent the luckless traveller to the scaffold. Gaudissart, who believed he owed his life to the judge, cherished the grief of being unable to make his savior any other return than that of sterile gratitude. As he could not thank a judge for doing justice, he went to the Ragons and declared himself liege-vassal forever to the house of Popinot.
While waiting about for Gaudissart, Anselme naturally went to look at the shop in the Rue des Cinq-Diamants, and got the address of the owner, for the purpose of negotiating a lease. As he sauntered through the dusky labyrinth of the great market, thinking how to achieve a rapid success, he suddenly came, in the Rue Aubry-le-Boucher, upon a rare chance, and one of good omen, with which he resolved to regale Cesar on the morrow. Soon after, while standing about the door of the Hotel du Commerce, at the end of the Rue des Deux-Ecus, about midnight, he heard, in the far distance of the Rue de Grenelle, a vaudeville chorus sung by Gaudissart, with a cane accompaniment significantly rapped upon the pavement.
"Monsieur," said Anselme, suddenly appearing from the doorway, "two words?"
"Eleven, if you like," said the commercial traveller, brandishing his loaded cane over the aggressor.
"I am Popinot," said poor Anselme.
"Enough!" cried Gaudissart, recognizing him. "What do you need? Money?
--absent, on leave, but we can get it. My arm for a duel?--all is yours, from my head to my heels," and he sang,--
"Behold! behold!
A Frenchman true!"
"Come and talk with me for ten minutes; not in your room,--we might be overheard,--but on the Quai de l'Horloge; there's no one there at this hour," said Popinot. "It is about something important."
"Exciting, hey? Proceed."
In ten minutes Gaudissart, put in possession of Popinot's secret, saw its importance.
"Come forth! perfumers, hair-dressers, petty retailers!"
sang Gaudissart, mimicking Lafon in the role of the Cid. "I shall grab every shopkeeper in France and Navarre.--Oh, an idea! I was about to start; I remain; I shall take commissions from the Parisian perfumers."
"Why?"
"To strangle your rivals, ******ton! If I take their orders I can make their perfidious cosmetics drink oil, simply by talking and working for yours only. A first-rate traveller's trick! Ha! ha! we are the diplomatists of commerce. Famous! As for your prospectus, I'll take charge of that. I've got a friend--early childhood--Andoche Finot, son of the hat-maker in the Rue du Coq, the old buffer who launched me into travelling on hats. Andoche, who has a great deal of wit,--he got it all out of the heads tiled by his father,--he is in literature; he does the minor theatres in the 'Courrier des Spectacles.' His father, an old dog chock-full of reasons for not liking wit, won't believe in it; impossible to make him see that mind can be sold, sells itself in fact: he won't believe in anything but the three-sixes. Old Finot manages young Finot by famine. Andoche, a capable man, no fool,--I
don't consort with fools, except commercially,--Andoche makes epigrams for the 'Fidele Berger,' which pays; while the other papers, for which he works like a galley-slave, keep him down on his marrow-bones in the dust. Are not they jealous, those fellows? Just the same in the /article-Paris/! Finot wrote a superb comedy in one act for Mademoiselle Mars, most glorious of the glorious!--ah, there's a woman I love!--Well, in order to get it played he had to take it to the Gaite. Andoche understands prospectuses, he worms himself into the mercantile mind; and he's not proud, he'll concoct it for us gratis.
Damn it! with a bowl of punch and a few cakes we'll get it out of him;