, if you like," said the commercial traveller, brandishing his
loaded cane over the aggressor.

"I am Popinot," said poor Anselme.

"Enough!" cried Gaudissart, recognizing him. "What do you need?
Money?--absent, on leave, but we can get it. My arm for a duel?--all is
yours, from my head to my heels," and he sang,--

"Behold! behold!
A Frenchman true!"

"Come and talk with me for ten minutes; not in your room,--we might be
overheard,--but on the Quai de l'Horloge; there's no one there at this
hour," said Popinot. "It is about something important."

"Exciting, hey? Proceed."

In ten minutes Gaudissart, put in possession of Popinot's secret, saw
its importance.

"Come forth! perfumers, hair-dressers, petty retailers!"

sang Gaudissart, mimicking Lafon in the role of the Cid. "I shall grab
every shopkeeper in France and Navarre.--Oh, an idea! I was about to
start; I remain; I shall take commissions from the Parisian perfumers."

"Why?"

"To strangle your rivals, simpleton! If I take their orders I can make
their perfidious cosmetics drink oil, simply by talking and working
for yours only. A first-rate traveller's trick! Ha! ha! we are the
diplomatists of commerce. Famous! As for your prospectus, I'll take
charge of that. I've got a friend--early childhood--Andoche Finot, son
of the hat-maker in the Rue du Coq, the old buffer who launched me into
travelling on hats. Andoche, who has a great deal of wit,--he got it all
out of the heads tiled by his father,--he is in literature; he does the
minor theatres in the 'Courrier des Spectacles.' His father, an old
dog chock-full of reasons for not liking wit, won't believe in it;
impossible to make him see that mind can be sold, sells itself in fact:
he won't believe in anything but the three-sixes. Old Finot manages
young Finot by famine. Andoche, a capable man, no fool,--I don't consort
with fools, except commercially,--Andoche makes epigrams for the 'Fidele
Berger,' which pays; while the other papers, for which he works like
a galley-slave, keep him down on his marrow-bones in the dust. Are not
they jealous, those fellows? Just the same in the _article-Paris_! Finot
wrote a superb comedy in one act for Mademoiselle Mars, most glorious
of the glorious!--ah, there's a woman I love!--Well, in order to get it
played he had to take it to the Gaite. Andoche understands prospectuses,
he worms himself into the mercantile mind; and he's not proud, he'll
concoct it for us