Nevertheless, after August and October, 1830, he abandoned the hat trade and the article Paris, and tore himself from things mechanical and visible to mount into the higher spheres of Parisian speculation. “He forsook,” to use his own words, “matter for mind; manufactured products for the infinitely purer elaborations of human intelligence.” This requires some explanation.
The general upset of 1830 brought to birth, as everybody knows, a number of old ideas which clever speculators tried to pass off in new bodies. After 1830 ideas became property. A writer, too wise to publish his writings, once remarked that “more ideas are stolen than pocket-handkerchiefs.” Perhaps in course of time we may have an Exchange for thought; in fact, even now ideas, good or bad, have their consols, are bought up, imported, exported, sold, and quoted like stocks. If ideas are not on hand ready for sale, speculators try to pass off words in their stead, and actually live upon them as a bird lives on the seeds of his millet. Pray do not laugh; a word is worth quite as much as an idea in a land where the ticket on a sack is of more importance than the contents. Have we not seen libraries working off the word “picturesque” when literature would have cut the throat of the word “fantastic”? Fiscal genius has guessed the proper tax on intellect; it has accurately estimated the profits of advertising; it has registered a prospectus of the quantity and exact value of the property, weighing its thought at the intellectual Stamp Office in the Rue de la Paix.
Having become an article of commerce, intellect and all its products must naturally obey the laws which bind other manufacturing interests. Thus it often happens that ideas, conceived in their cups by certain apparently idle Parisians, — who nevertheless fight many a moral battle over their champagne and their pheasants, — are handed down at their birth from the brain to the commercial travellers who are employed to spread them discreetly, “urbi et orbi,” through Paris and the provinces, seasoned with the fried pork of advertisement and prospectus, by means of which they catch in their rat-trap the departmental rodent commonly called subscriber, sometimes stockholder, occasionally corresponding member or patron, but invariably fool.
“I am a fool!” many a poor country proprietor has said when, caught by the prospect of being the first to launch a new idea, he finds that he has, in point of fact, launched his thousand or twelve hundred francs into a gulf.
“Subscribers are fools who never can be brought to understand that to go ahead in the intellectual world they must start with more money than they need for the tour of Europe,” say the speculators.
Consequently there is endless warfare between the recalcitrant public which refuses to pay the Parisian imposts and the tax-gatherer who, living by his receipt of custom, lards the public with new ideas, turns it on the spit of lively projects, roasts it with prospectuses (basting all the while with flattery), and finally gobbles it up with some toothsome sauce in which it is caught and intoxicated like a fly with a black-lead. Moreover, since 1830 what honors and emoluments have been scattered throughout France to stimulate the zeal and self-love of the “progressive and intelligent masses”! Titles, medals, diplomas, a sort of legion of honor invented for the army of martyrs, have followed each other with marvellous rapidity. Speculators in the manufactured products of the intellect have developed a spice, a ginger, all their own. From this have come premiums, forestalled dividends, and that conscription of noted names which is levied without the knowledge of the unfortunate writers who bear them, and who thus find themselves actual co-operators in more enterprises than there are days in the year; for the law, we may remark, takes no account of the theft of a patronymic. Worse than all is the rape of ideas which these caterers for the public mind, like the slave-merchants of Asia, tear from the paternal brain before they are well matured, and drag half-clothed before the eyes of their blockhead of a sultan, their Shahabaham, their terrible public, which, if they don’t amuse it, will cut off their heads by curtailing the ingots and emptying their pockets.
This madness of our epoch reacted upon the illustrious Gaudissart, and here follows the history of how it happened. A life-insurance company having been told of his irresistible eloquence offered him an unheard-of commission, which he graciously accepted. The bargain concluded and the treaty signed, our traveller was put in training, or we might say weaned, by the secretary-general of the enterprise, who freed his mind of its swaddling-clothes, showed him the dark holes of the business, taught him its dialect, took the mechanism apart bit by bit, dissected for his instruction the particular public he was expected to gull, crammed him with phrases, fed him with impromptu replies, provisioned him with unanswerable arguments, and, so to speak, sharpened the file of the tongue which was about to operate upon the life of France.
The puppet amply rewarded the pains bestowed upon him. The heads of the company boasted of the illustrious Gaudissart, showed him such attention and proclaimed the great talents of this perambulating prospectus so loudly in the sphere of exalted banking and commercial diplomacy, that the financial managers of two newspapers (celebrated at that time but since defunct) were seized with the idea of employing him to get subscribers. The proprietors of the “Globe,” an organ of Saint-Simonism, and the “Movement,” a republican journal, each invited the illustrious Gaudissart to a conference, and proposed to give him ten francs a head for every subscriber, provided he brought in a thousand, but only five francs if he got no more than five hundred. The cause of political journalism not interfering with the pre-accepted cause of life insurance, the bargain was struck; although Gaudissart demanded an indemnity from the Saint-Simonians for the eight days he was forced to spend in studying the doctrines of their apostle, asserting that a prodigious effort of memory and intellect was necessary to get to the bottom of that “article” and to reason upon it suitably. He asked nothing, however, from the republicans. In the first place, he inclined in republican ideas, — the only ones, according to guadissardian philosophy, which could bring about a rational equality. Besides which he had already dipped into the conspiracies of the French “carbonari”; he had been arrested, and released for want of proof; and finally, as he called the newspaper proprietors to observe, he had lately grown a mustache, and needed only a hat of certain shape and a pair of spurs to represent, with due propriety, the Republic.
CHAPTER II
For one whole week this commanding genius went every morning to be Saint-Simonized at the office of the “Globe,” and every afternoon he betook himself to the life-insurance company, where he learned the intricacies of financial diplomacy. His aptitude and his memory were prodigious; so that he was able to start on his peregrinations by the 15th of April, the date at which he usually opened the spring campaign. Two large commercial houses, alarmed at the decline of business, implored the ambitious Gaudissart not to desert the article Paris, and seduced him, it was said, with large offers, to take their commissions once more. The king of travellers was amenable to the claims of his old friends, enforced as they were by the enormous premiums offered to him.
“Listen, my little Jenny,” he said in a hackney-coach to a pretty florist.
All truly great men delight in allowing themselves to be tyrannized over by a feeble being, and Gaudissart had found his tyrant in Jenny. He was bringing her home at eleven o’clock from the Gymnase, whither he had taken her, in full dress, to a proscenium box on the first tier.
“On my return, Jenny, I shall refurnish your room in superior style. That big Matilda, who pesters you with comparisons and her real India shawls imported by the suite of the Russian ambassador, and her silver plate and her Russian prince, — who to my mind is nothing but a humbug, — won’t have a word to say then. I consecrate to the adornment of your room all the ‘Children’ I shall get in the provinces.”
“Well, that’s a pretty thing to say!” cried the florist. “Monster of a man! Do you dare to talk to me of your children? Do you suppose I am going to stand that sort of thing?”
“Oh, what a goose you are, my Jenny! That’s only a fig
ure of speech in our business.”
“A fine business, then!”
“Well, but listen; if you talk all the time you’ll always be in the right.”
“I mean to be. Upon my word, you take things easy!”
“You don’t let me finish. I have taken under my protection a superlative idea, — a journal, a newspaper, written for children. In our profession, when travellers have caught, let us suppose, ten subscribers to the ‘Children’s Journal,’ they say, ‘I’ve got ten Children,’ just as I say when I get ten subscriptions to a newspaper called the ‘Movement,’ ‘I’ve got ten Movements.’ Now don’t you see?”
“That’s all right. Are you going into politics? If you do you’ll get into Saint-Pelagie, and I shall have to trot down there after you. Oh! if one only knew what one puts one’s foot into when we love a man, on my word of honor we would let you alone to take care of yourselves, you men! However, if you are going away to-morrow we won’t talk of disagreeable things, — that would be silly.”
The coach stopped before a pretty house, newly built in the Rue d’Artois, where Gaudissart and Jenny climbed to the fourth story. This was the abode of Mademoiselle Jenny Courand, commonly reported to be privately married to the illustrious Gaudissart, a rumor which that individual did not deny. To maintain her supremacy, Jenny kept him to the performance of innumerable small attentions, and threatened continually to turn him off if he omitted the least of them. She now ordered him to write to her from every town, and render a minute account of all his proceedings.
“How many ‘Children’ will it take to furnish my chamber?” she asked, throwing off her shawl and sitting down by a good fire.
“I get five sous for each subscriber.”
“Delightful! And is it with five sous that you expect to make me rich? Perhaps you are like the Wandering Jew with your pockets full of money.”
“But, Jenny, I shall get a thousand ‘Children.’ Just reflect that children have never had a newspaper to themselves before. But what a fool I am to try to explain matters to you, — you can’t understand such things.”
“Can’t I? Then tell me, — tell me, Gaudissart, if I’m such a goose why do you love me?”
“Just because you are a goose, — a sublime goose! Listen, Jenny. See here, I am going to undertake the ‘Globe,’ the ‘Movement,’ the ‘Children,’ the insurance business, and some of my old articles Paris; instead of earning a miserable eight thousand a year, I’ll bring back twenty thousand at least from each trip.”
“Unlace me, Gaudissart, and do it right; don’t tighten me.”
“Yes, truly,” said the traveller, complacently; “I shall become a shareholder in the newspapers, like Finot, one of my friends, the son of a hatter, who now has thirty thousand francs income, and is going to make himself a peer of France. When one thinks of that little Popinot, — ah, mon Dieu! I forgot to tell you that Monsieur Popinot was named minister of commerce yesterday. Why shouldn’t I be ambitious too? Ha! ha! I could easily pick up the jargon of those fellows who talk in the chamber, and bluster with the rest of them. Now, listen to me: —
“Gentlemen,” he said, standing behind a chair, “the Press is neither a tool nor an article of barter: it is, viewed under its political aspects, an institution. We are bound, in virtue of our position as legislators, to consider all things politically, and therefore” (here he stopped to get breath) — ”and therefore we must examine the Press and ask ourselves if it is useful or noxious, if it should be encouraged or put down, taxed or free. These are serious questions. I feel that I do not waste the time, always precious, of this Chamber by examining this article — the Press — and explaining to you its qualities. We are on the verge of an abyss. Undoubtedly the laws have not the nap which they ought to have — Hein?” he said, looking at Jenny. “All orators put France on the verge of an abyss. They either say that or they talk about the chariot of state, or convulsions, or political horizons. Don’t I know their dodges? I’m up to all the tricks of all the trades. Do you know why? Because I was born with a caul; my mother has got it, but I’ll give it to you. You’ll see! I shall soon be in the government.”
“You!”
“Why shouldn’t I be the Baron Gaudissart, peer of France? Haven’t they twice elected Monsieur Popinot as deputy from the fourth arrondissement? He dines with Louis Phillippe. There’s Finot; he is going to be, they say, a member of the Council. Suppose they send me as ambassador to London? I tell you I’d nonplus those English! No man ever got the better of Gaudissart, the illustrious Gaudissart, and nobody ever will. Yes, I say it! no one ever outwitted me, and no one can — in any walk of life, politics or impolitics, here or elsewhere. But, for the time being, I must give myself wholly to the capitalists; to the ‘Globe,’ the ‘Movement,’ the ‘Children,’ and my article Paris.”
“You will be brought up with a round turn, you and your newspapers. I’ll bet you won’t get further than Poitiers before the police will nab you.”
“What will you bet?”
“A shawl.”
“Done! If I lose that shawl I’ll go back to the article Paris and the hat business. But as for getting the better of Gaudissart — never! never!”
And the illustrious traveller threw himself into position before Jenny, looked at her proudly, one hand in his waistcoat, his head at three-quarter profile, — an attitude truly Napoleonic.
“Oh, how funny you are! what have you been eating to-night?”
Gaudissart was thirty-eight years of age, of medium height, stout and fat like men who roll about continually in stage-coaches, with a face as round as a pumpkin, ruddy cheeks, and regular features of the type which sculptors of all lands adopt as a model for statues of Abundance, Law, Force, Commerce, and the like. His protuberant stomach swelled forth in the shape of a pear; his legs were small, but active and vigorous. He caught Jenny up in his arms like a baby and kissed her.
“Hold your tongue, young woman!” he said. “What do you know about Saint-Simonism, antagonism, Fourierism, criticism, heroic enterprise, or woman’s freedom? I’ll tell you what they are, — ten francs for each subscription, Madame Gaudissart.”
“On my word of honor, you are going crazy, Gaudissart.”
“More and more crazy about you,” he replied, flinging his hat upon the sofa.
The next morning Gaudissart, having breakfasted gloriously with Jenny, departed on horseback to work up the chief towns of the district to which he was assigned by the various enterprises in whose interests he was now about to exercise his great talents. After spending forty-five days in beating up the country between Paris and Blois, he remained two weeks at the latter place to write up his correspondence and make short visits to the various market towns of the department. The night before he left Blois for Tours he indited a letter to Mademoiselle Jenny Courand. As the conciseness and charm of this epistle cannot be equalled by any narration of ours, and as, moreover, it proves the legitimacy of the tie which united these two individuals, we produce it here: —
“My dear Jenny, — You will lose your wager. Like Napoleon,
Gaudissart the illustrious has his star, but not his Waterloo. I
triumph everywhere. Life insurance has done well. Between Paris
and Blois I lodged two millions. But as I get to the centre of
France heads become infinitely harder and millions correspondingly
scarce. The article Paris keeps up its own little jog-trot. It is
a ring on the finger. With all my well-known cunning I spit these
shop-keepers like larks. I got off one hundred and sixty-two
Ternaux shawls at Orleans. I am sure I don’t know what they will
do with them, unless they return them to the backs of the sheep.
“As to the article journal — the devil! that’s a horse of another
color. Holy saints! how one has to warble before you can teach
these bumpkins a new tune. I have only made sixty-two ‘Movements’:
exactly a hundred less for the whole trip than the shawls in one
town. Those republican rogues! they won’t subscribe. They talk,
they talk; they share your opinions, and presently you are all
agreed that every existing thing must be overturned. You feel sure
your man is going to subscribe. Not a bit of it! If he owns three
feet of ground, enough to grow ten cabbages, or a few trees to
slice into toothpicks, the fellow begins to talk of consolidated
property, taxes, revenues, indemnities, — a whole lot of stuff, and
I have wasted my time and breath on patriotism. It’s a bad
business! Candidly, the ‘Movement’ does not move. I have written
to the directors and told them so. I am sorry for it — on account
of my political opinions.
“As for the ‘Globe,’ that’s another breed altogether. Just set to
work and talk new doctrines to people you fancy are fools enough
to believe such lies, — why, they think you want to burn their
houses down! It is vain for me to tell them that I speak for
futurity, for posterity, for self-interest properly understood;
for enterprise where nothing can be lost; that man has preyed upon
man long enough; that woman is a slave; that the great
providential thought should be made to triumph; that a way must be
found to arrive at a rational co-ordination of the social fabric,
— in short, the whole reverberation of my sentences. Well, what do
Works of Honore De Balzac Page 397