teeth and was furiously angry. I put on my
grand air—you know—and said to
him: ’Ah, ca! Monsieur, you are
remarkably aggressive; if you are not content, I
am ready to give you satisfaction; I fought in July.’
‘Though the father of a family,’ he replied,
‘I am ready—’ ‘Father
of a family!’ I exclaimed; ’my dear sir,
have you any children?’ ‘Yes.’
‘Twelve years old?’ ‘Just about.’
’Well, then, the “Children’s Journal”
is the very thing for you; six francs a year, one
number a month, double columns, edited by great literary
lights, well got up, good paper, engravings from
charming sketches by our best artists, actual colored
drawings of the Indies—will not fade.’
I fired my broadside ’feelings of a father, etc.,
etc.,’—in short, a subscription
instead of a quarrel. ’There’s nobody
but Gaudissart who can get out of things like that,’
said that little cricket Lamard to the big Bulot
at the cafe, when he told him the story.
“I leave to-morrow for Amboise.
I shall do up Amboise in two days, and I will write
next from Tours, where I shall measure swords with
the inhabitants of that colorless region; colorless,
I mean, from the intellectual and speculative point
of view. But, on the word of a Gaudissart,
they shall be toppled over, toppled down—
floored, I say.
“Adieu, my kitten. Love
me always; be faithful; fidelity through
thick and thin is one of the attributes of the Free
Woman. Who is
kissing you on the eyelids?
“Thy Felix Forever.”
Five days later Gaudissart started from the Hotel
des Faisans, at which he had put up in Tours, and
went to Vouvray, a rich and populous district where
the public mind seemed to him susceptible of cultivation.
Mounted upon his horse, he trotted along the embankment
thinking no more of his phrases than an actor thinks
of his part which he has played for a hundred times.
It was thus that the illustrious Gaudissart went his
cheerful way, admiring the landscape, and little dreaming
that in the happy valleys of Vouvray his commercial
infallibility was about to perish.
Here a few remarks upon the public mind of Touraine
are essential to our story. The subtle, satirical,
epigrammatic tale-telling spirit stamped on every
page of Rabelais is the faithful expression of the
Tourangian mind,—a mind polished and refined
as it should be in a land where the kings of France
long held their court; ardent, artistic, poetic, voluptuous,
yet whose first impulses subside quickly. The
softness of the atmosphere, the beauty of the climate,
a certain ease of life and joviality of manners, smother
before long the sentiment of art, narrow the widest
heart, and enervate the strongest will. Transplant
the Tourangian, and his fine qualities develop and
lead to great results, as we may see in many spheres
of action: look at Rabelais and Semblancay, Plantin
the printer and Descartes, Boucicault, the Napoleon
