is 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 b