constantly
failed, and he was now, like people in the higher walks of finance,
about to change his tone and become insolent, advisedly. But he needed a
small sum in hand on which to start, and Gaudissart gave him a share in
the present affair of ushering into the world the oil of Popinot.

"You are to negotiate on his account with the newspapers. But don't
play double; if you do I'll fight you to the death. Give him his money's
worth."

Popinot gazed at "the author" which much uneasiness. People who are
purely commercial look upon an author with mingled sentiments of fear,
compassion, and curiosity. Though Popinot had been well brought up, the
habits of his relations, their ideas, and the obfuscating effect of a
shop and a counting-room, had lowered his intelligence by bending it to
the use and wont of his calling,--a phenomenon which may often be
seen if we observe the transformations which take place in a hundred
comrades, when ten years supervene between the time when they leave
college or a public school, to all intents and purposes alike, and
the period when they meet again after contact with the world. Andoche
accepted Popinot's perturbation as a compliment.

"Now then, before dinner, let's get to the bottom of the prospectus;
then we can drink without an afterthought," said Gaudissart. "After
dinner one reads askew; the tongue digests."

"Monsieur," said Popinot, "a prospectus is often a fortune."

"And for plebeians like myself," said Andoche, "fortune is nothing more
than a prospectus."

"Ha, very good!" cried Gaudissart, "that rogue of a Finot has the wit of
the forty Academicians."

"Of a hundred Academicians," said Popinot, bewildered by these ideas.

The impatient Gaudissart seized the manuscript and began to read in a
loud voice, with much emphasis, "CEPHALIC OIL."

"I should prefer _Oil Cesarienne_," said Popinot.

"My friend," said Gaudissart, "you don't know the provincials; there's
a surgical operation called by that name, and they are such stupids that
they'll think your oil is meant to facilitate childbirth. To drag them
back from that to hair is beyond even my powers of persuasion."

"Without wishing to defend my term," said the author, "I must ask you
to observe that 'Cephalic Oil' means oil for the head, and sums up your
ideas in one word."

"Well, let us see," said Popinot impatiently.

Here follows the prospectus; the same which the trade receives, by the
thousand, to the present