travellers,
the _Frenchman par excellence_. A few days earlier Popinot had met
Gaudissart, who mentioned that he was on the point of departure; the
hope of finding him still in Paris sent the lover flying into the Rue
des Deux-Ecus, where he learned that the traveller had engaged his
place at the Messageries-Royales. To bid adieu to his beloved capital,
Gaudissart had gone to see a new piece at the Vaudeville; Popinot
resolved to wait for him. Was it not drawing a cheque on fortune to
entrust the launching of the oil of nuts to this incomparable steersman
of mercantile inventions, already petted and courted by the richest
firms? Popinot had reason to feel sure of Gaudissart. The commercial
traveller, so knowing in the art of entangling that most wary of human
beings, the little provincial trader, had himself become entangled in
the first conspiracy attempted against the Bourbons after the
Hundred Days. Gaudissart, to whom the open firmament of heaven was
indispensable, found himself shut up in prison, under the weight of an
accusation for a capital offence. Popinot the judge, who presided at
the trial, released him on the ground that it was nothing worse than his
imprudent folly which had mixed him up in the affair. A judge anxious
to please the powers in office, or a rabid royalist, would have sent the
luckless traveller to the scaffold. Gaudissart, who believed he owed
his life to the judge, cherished the grief of being unable to make his
savior any other return than that of sterile gratitude. As he could
not thank a judge for doing justice, he went to the Ragons and declared
himself liege-vassal forever to the house of Popinot.

While waiting about for Gaudissart, Anselme naturally went to look at
the shop in the Rue des Cinq-Diamants, and got the address of the owner,
for the purpose of negotiating a lease. As he sauntered through the
dusky labyrinth of the great market, thinking how to achieve a rapid
success, he suddenly came, in the Rue Aubry-le-Boucher, upon a rare
chance, and one of good omen, with which he resolved to regale Cesar on
the morrow. Soon after, while standing about the door of the Hotel du
Commerce, at the end of the Rue des Deux-Ecus, about midnight, he heard,
in the far distance of the Rue de Grenelle, a vaudeville chorus sung
by Gaudissart, with a cane accompaniment significantly rapped upon the
pavement.

"Monsieur," said Anselme, suddenly appearing from the doorway, "two
words?"

"Eleven