Parisians in the Country

To Madame la Duchesse de Castries.

Is not the commercial traveler⁠—a being unknown in earlier times⁠—one of the most curious types produced by the manners and customs of this age? And is it not his peculiar function to carry out in a certain class of things the immense transition which connects the age of material development with that of intellectual development? Our epoch will be the link between the age of isolated forces rich in original creativeness, and that of the uniform but leveling force which gives monotony to its products, casting them in masses, and following out an unifying idea⁠—the ultimate expression of social communities. After the Saturnalia of intellectual communism, after the last struggles of many civilizations concentrating all the treasures of the world on a single spot, must not the darkness of barbarism invariably supervene?

The commercial traveler is to ideas what coaches are to men and things. He carts them about, he sets them moving, brings them into impact. He loads himself at the centre of enlightenment with a supply of beams which he scatters among torpid communities. This human pyrophoros is an ignorant instructor, mystified and mystifying, a disbelieving priest who talks all the more glibly of arcana and dogmas. A strange figure! The man has seen everything, he knows everything, he is acquainted with everybody. Saturated in Parisian vice, he can assume the rusticity of the countryman. Is he not the link that joins the village to the capital, though himself not essentially either Parisian or provincial?

“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.

Monsieur Vernier⁠—so this little great man of the place was named⁠—was finishing his breakfast, between his wife and his daughter, when Gaudissart made his appearance in the dining-room⁠—one of the most cheerful dining-rooms for miles round, with a view from the windows over the Loire and the Cher.

“Is it to Monsieur Vernier himself that I have the honor⁠—?” said the traveler, bending his vertebral column with so much grace that it seemed to be elastic.

“Yes, monsieur,” said the wily dyer, interrupting him with a scrutinizing glance, by which he at once took the measure of the man he had to do with.

“I have come, monsieur,” Gaudissart went on, “to request the assistance of your enlightenment to direct me in this district where, as I learn from Mitouflet, you exert the greatest influence. I am an emissary, monsieur, to this Department in behalf of an undertaking of the highest importance, backed by bankers who are anxious⁠—”

“Anxious to swindle us!” said Vernier, laughing, long since used to deal with the commercial traveler and to follow his game.

Bianchon shook his head in negation.

“Beauvoir was eating his heart out, for death alone could set him free. One morning the turnkey, whose duty it was to bring him his food, instead of leaving him when he had given him his meagre pittance, stood with his arms folded, looking at him with strange meaning. Conversation between them was brief, and the warder never began it. The Chevalier was therefore greatly surprised when the man said to him: ‘Of course, monsieur, you know your own business when you insist on being always called Monsieur Lebrun, or citizen Lebrun. It is no concern of mine; ascertaining your name is no part of my duty. It is all the same to me whether you call yourself Peter or Paul. If every man minds his own business, the cows will not stray. At the same time, I know,’ said he, with a wink, ‘that you are Monsieur Charles-Félix-Théodore, Chevalier de Beauvoir, and cousin to Madame la Duchesse de Maillé.⁠—Heh?’ he added after a short silence, during which he looked at his prisoner.

“Beauvoir, seeing that he was safe under lock and key, did not imagine that his position could be any the worse if his real name were known.

“ ‘Well, and supposing I were the Chevalier de Beauvoir, what should I gain by that?’ said he.

“ ‘Oh, there is everything to be gained by it,’ replied the jailer in an undertone. ‘I have been paid to help you to get away; but wait a minute! If I were suspected in the smallest degree, I should be shot out of hand. So I have said that I will do no more in the matter than will just earn the money.⁠—Look here,’ said he, taking a small file out of his pocket, ‘this is your key; with this you can cut through one of your bars.

“At the time of the expedition sent out to restore Ferdinand VII I was appointed to a place in Spain; but, happily for me, I got no further than Tours when I was promised the post of Receiver here at Sancerre. On the eve of setting out I was at a ball at Madame de Listomère’s, where we were to meet several Spaniards of high rank. On rising from the card-table, I saw a Spanish grandee, an afrancesado in exile, who had been about a fortnight in Touraine. He had arrived very late at this ball⁠—his first appearance in society⁠—accompanied by his wife, whose right arm was perfectly motionless. Everybody made way in silence for this couple, whom we all watched with some excitement. Imagine a picture by Murillo come to life. Under black and hollow brows the man’s eyes were like a fixed blaze; his face looked dried up, his bald skull was red, and his frame was a terror to behold, he was so emaciated. His wife⁠—no, you cannot imagine her. Her figure had the supple swing for which the Spaniards created the word meneho; though pale, she was still beautiful; her complexion was dazzlingly fair⁠—a rare thing in a Spaniard; and her gaze, full of the Spanish sun, fell on you like a stream of melted lead.

“ ‘Madame,’ said I to her, towards the end of the evening, ‘what occurrence led to the loss of your arm?’

“ ‘I lost it in the war of independence,’ said she.”

“Spain is a strange country,” said Madame de la Baudraye. “It still shows traces of Arab manners.”