poems.

If she is a city madam, the oldest is put forward. He brings out a
hundred shawls in fifteen minutes; he turns her head with colors and
patterns; every shawl that he shows her is like a circle described by a
kite wheeling round a hapless rabbit, till at the end of half an hour,
when her head is swimming and she is utterly incapable of making a
decision for herself, the good lady, meeting with a flattering response
to all her ideas, refers the question to the assistant, who promptly
leaves her on the horns of a dilemma between two equally irresistible
shawls.

"This, madame, is very becoming--apple-green, the color of the season;
still, fashions change; while as for this other black-and-white shawl
(an opportunity not to be missed), you will never see the end of it, and
it will go with any dress."

This is the A B C of the trade.

"You would not believe how much eloquence is wanted in that beastly
line," the head Gaudissart of this particular establishment remarked
quite lately to two acquaintances (Duronceret and Bixiou) who had come
trusting in his judgment to buy a shawl. "Look here; you are artists and
discreet, I can tell you about the governor's tricks, and of all the men
I ever saw, he is the cleverest. I do not mean as a manufacturer, there
M. Fritot is first; but as a salesman. He discovered the 'Selim shawl,'
_an absolutely unsalable_ article, yet we never bring it out but we
sell it. We keep always a shawl worth five or six hundred francs in a
cedar-wood box, perfectly plain outside, but lined with satin. It is
one of the shawls that Selim sent to the Emperor Napoleon. It is our
Imperial Guard; it is brought to the front whenever the day is almost
lost; _il se vend et ne meurt pas_--it sells its life dearly time after
time."

As he spoke, an Englishwoman stepped from her jobbed carriage and
appeared in all the glory of that phlegmatic humor peculiar to
Britain and to all its products which make believe they are alive. The
apparition put you in mind of the Commandant's statue in Don Juan, it
walked along, jerkily by fits and starts, in an awkward fashion invented
in London, and cultivated in every family with patriotic care.

"An Englishwoman!" he continued for Bixiou's ear. "An Englishwoman is
our Waterloo. There are women who slip through our fingers like eels; we
catch them on the staircase. There are lorettes who chaff us, we join
in the laugh, we have a hold on them because we give credit.