The Illustrious Gaudissart, Honoré de Balzac [good books to read for teens txt] 📗

profit of _one_. From this comes the doctrine of--"

"How about servants?" demanded the lunatic.

"They will remain servants if they have no capacity beyond it."

"Then what's the good of your doctrine?"

"To judge of this doctrine, Monsieur, you must consider it from a higher point of view: you must take a general survey of humanity. Here we come to the theories of Ballance: do you know his Palingenesis?"

"I am fond of them," said the fool, who thought he said "ices."

"Good!" returned Gaudissart. "Well, then, if the palingenistic aspects of the successive transformations of the spiritualized globe have struck, stirred, roused you, then, my dear sir, the 'Globe' newspaper,--noble name which proclaims its mission,--the 'Globe' is an organ, a guide, who will explain to you with the coming of each day the conditions under which this vast political and moral change will be effected. The gentlemen who--"

"Do they drink wine?"

"Yes, Monsieur; their houses are kept up in the highest style; I may say, in prophetic style. Superb salons, large receptions, the apex of social life--"

"Well," remarked the lunatic, "the workmen who pull things down want wine as much as those who put things up."

"True," said the illustrious Gaudissart, "and all the more, Monsieur, when they pull down with one hand and build up with the other, like the apostles of the 'Globe.'"

"They want good wine; Head of Vouvray, two puncheons, three hundred bottles, only one hundred francs,--a trifle."

"How much is that a bottle?" said Gaudissart, calculating. "Let me see; there's the freight and the duty,--it will come to about seven sous. Why, it wouldn't be a bad thing: they give more for worse wines--(Good! I've got him!" thought Gaudissart, "he wants to sell me wine which I want; I'll master him)--Well, Monsieur," he continued, "those who argue usually come to an agreement. Let us be frank with each other. You have great influence in this district--"

"I should think so!" said the madman; "I am the Head of Vouvray!"

"Well, I see that you thoroughly comprehend the insurance of intellectual capital--"

"Thoroughly."

"--and that you have measured the full importance of the 'Globe'--"

"Twice; on foot."

Gaudissart was listening to himself and not to the replies of his hearer.

"Therefore, in view of your circumstances and of your age, I quite understand that you have no need of insurance for yourself; but, Monsieur, you might induce others to insure, either because of their inherent qualities which need development, or for the protection of their families against a precarious future. Now, if you will subscribe to the 'Globe,' and give me your personal assistance in this district on behalf of insurance, especially life-annuity,--for the provinces are much attached to annuities--Well, if you will do this, then we can come to an understanding about the wine. Will you take the 'Globe'?"

"I stand on the globe."

"Will you advance its interests in this district?"

"I advance."

"And?"

"And--"

"And I--but you do subscribe, don't you, to the 'Globe'?"

"The globe, good thing, for life," said the lunatic.

"For life, Monsieur?--ah, I see! yes, you are right: it is full of life, vigor, intellect, science,--absolutely crammed with science,--well printed, clear type, well set up; what I call 'good nap.' None of your botched stuff, cotton and wool, trumpery; flimsy rubbish that rips if you look at it. It is deep; it states questions on which you can meditate at your leisure; it is the very thing to make time pass agreeably in the country."

"That suits me," said the lunatic.

"It only costs a trifle,--eighty francs."

"That won't suit me," said the lunatic.

"Monsieur!" cried Gaudissart, "of course you have got grandchildren? There's the 'Children's Journal'; that only costs seven francs a year."

"Very good; take my wine, and I will subscribe to the children. That suits me very well: a fine idea! intellectual product, child. That's man living upon man, hein?"

"You've hit it, Monsieur," said Gaudissart.

"I've hit it!"

"You consent to push me in the district?"

"In the district."

"I have your approbation?"

"You have it."

"Well, then, Monsieur, I take your wine at a hundred francs--"

"No, no! hundred and ten--"

"Monsieur! A hundred and ten for the company, but a hundred to me. I enable you to make a sale; you owe me a commission."

"Charge 'em a hundred and twenty,"--"cent vingt" ("sans vin," without wine).

"Capital pun that!"

"No, puncheons. About that wine--"

"Better and better! why, you are a wit."

"Yes, I'm that," said the fool. "Come out and see my vineyards."

"Willingly, the wine is getting into my head," said the illustrious Gaudissart, following Monsieur Margaritis, who marched him from row to row and hillock to hillock among the vines. The three ladies and Monsieur Vernier, left to themselves, went off into fits of laughter as they watched the traveller and the lunatic discussing, gesticulating, stopping short, resuming their walk, and talking vehemently.

"I wish the good-man hadn't carried him off," said Vernier.

Finally the pair returned, walking with the eager step of men who were in haste to finish up a matter of business.

"He has got the better of the Parisian, damn him!" cried Vernier.

And so it was. To the huge delight of the lunatic our illustrious Gaudissart sat down at a card-table and wrote an order for the delivery of the two casks of wine. Margaritis, having carefully read it over, counted out seven francs for his subscription to the "Children's Journal" and gave them to the traveller.

"Adieu until to-morrow, Monsieur," said Gaudissart, twisting his watch-key. "I shall have the honor to call for you to-morrow. Meantime, send the wine at once to Paris to the address I have given you, and the price will be remitted immediately."

Gaudissart, however, was a Norman, and he had no idea of making any agreement which was not reciprocal. He therefore required his promised supporter to sign a bond (which the lunatic carefully read over) to deliver two puncheons of the wine called "Head of Vouvray," vineyard of Margaritis.

This done, the illustrious Gaudissart departed in high feather, humming, as he skipped along,--


"The King of the South,
He burned his mouth," etc.



CHAPTER V

The illustrious Gaudissart returned to the Soleil d'Or, where he naturally conversed with the landlord while waiting for dinner. Mitouflet was an old soldier, guilelessly crafty, like the peasantry of the Loire; he never laughed at a jest, but took it with the gravity of a man accustomed to the roar of cannon and to make his own jokes under arms.

"You have some very strong-minded people here," said Gaudissart, leaning against the door-post and lighting his cigar at Mitouflet's pipe.

"How do you mean?" asked Mitouflet.

"I mean people who are rough-shod on political and financial ideas."

"Whom have you seen? if I may ask without indiscretion," said the landlord innocently, expectorating after the adroit and periodical fashion of smokers.

"A fine, energetic fellow named Margaritis."

Mitouflet cast two glances in succession at his guest which were expressive of chilling irony.

"May be; the good-man knows a deal. He knows too much for other folks, who can't always understand him."

"I can believe it, for he thoroughly comprehends the abstruse principles of finance."

"Yes," said the innkeeper, "and for my part, I am sorry he is a lunatic."

"A lunatic! What do you mean?"

"Well, crazy,--cracked, as people are when they are insane," answered Mitouflet. "But he is not dangerous; his wife takes care of him. Have you been arguing with him?" added the pitiless landlord; "that must have been funny!"

"Funny!" cried Gaudissart. "Funny! Then your Monsieur Vernier has been making fun of me!"

"Did he send you there?"

"Yes."

"Wife! wife! come here and listen. If Monsieur Vernier didn't take it into his head to send this gentleman to talk to Margaritis!"

"What in the world did you say to each other, my dear, good Monsieur?" said the wife. "Why, he's crazy!"

"He sold me two casks of wine."

"Did you buy them?"

"Yes."

"But that is his delusion; he thinks he sells his wine, and he hasn't any."

"Ha!" snorted the traveller, "then I'll go straight to Monsieur Vernier and thank him."

And Gaudissart departed, boiling over with rage, to shake the ex-dyer, whom he found in his salon, laughing with a company of friends to whom he had already recounted the tale.

"Monsieur," said the prince of travellers, darting a savage glance at his enemy, "you are a scoundrel and a blackguard; and under pain of being thought a turn-key,--a species of being far below a galley-slave,--you will give me satisfaction for the insult you dared to offer me in sending me to a man whom you knew to be a lunatic! Do you hear me, Monsieur Vernier, dyer?"

Such was the harangue which Gaudissart prepared as he went along, as a tragedian makes ready for his entrance on the scene.

"What!" cried Vernier, delighted at the presence of an audience, "do you think we have no right to make fun of a man who comes here, bag and baggage, and demands that we hand over our property because, forsooth, he is pleased to call us great men, painters, artists, poets,--mixing us up gratuitously with a set of fools who have neither house nor home, nor sous nor sense? Why should we put up with a rascal who comes here and wants us to feather his nest by subscribing to a newspaper which preaches a new religion whose first doctrine is, if you please, that we are not to inherit from our fathers and mothers? On my sacred word of honor, Pere Margaritis said things a great deal more sensible. And now, what are you complaining about? You and Margaritis seemed to understand each other. The gentlemen here present can testify that if you had talked to the whole canton you couldn't have been as well understood."

"That's all very well for you to say; but I have been insulted, Monsieur, and I demand satisfaction!"

"Very good, Monsieur! consider yourself insulted, if you like. I shall not give you satisfaction, because there is neither rhyme nor reason nor satisfaction to be found in the whole business. What an absurd fool he is, to be sure!"

At these words Gaudissart flew at the dyer to give him a slap on the face, but the listening crowd rushed between them, so that the illustrious traveller only contrived to knock off the wig of his enemy, which fell on the head of Mademoiselle Clara Vernier.

"If you are not satisfied, Monsieur," he said, "I shall be at the Soleil d'Or until to-morrow morning, and you will find me ready to show you what it means to give satisfaction. I fought in July, Monsieur."

"And you shall fight in Vouvray," answered the dyer; "and what is more, you shall stay here longer than you imagine."

Gaudissart marched off, turning over in his mind this prophetic remark, which seemed to him full of sinister portent. For the first time in his life the prince of travellers did not dine jovially. The whole town of Vouvray was put in a ferment about the "affair" between Monsieur Vernier and the apostle of Saint-Simonism. Never before had the tragic event of a duel been so much as heard of in that benign and happy valley.

"Monsieur Mitouflet,