THE ILLUSTRIOUS GAUDISSART
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countries many such diplomats of low degree; consummate negotiators
arguing in the interests of calico, jewels, frippery, wines; and often
displaying more true diplomacy than ambassadors themselves, who, for
the most part, know only the forms of it. No one in France can doubt
the powers of the commercial traveller; that intrepid soul who dares
all, and boldly brings the genius of civilization and the modern
inventions of Paris into a struggle with the plain commonsense of
remote villages, and the ignorant and boorish treadmill of provincial
ways. Can we ever forget the skilful manoeuvres by which he worms
himself into the minds of the populace, bringing a volume of words to
bear upon the refractory, reminding us of the indefatigable worker in
marbles whose file eats slowly into a block of porphyry? Would you
seek to know the utmost power of language, or the strongest pressure
that a phrase can bring to bear against rebellious lucre, against the
miserly proprietor squatting in the recesses of his country lair?--
listen to one of these great ambassadors of Parisian industry as he
revolves and works and sucks like an intelligent piston of the steam-
engine called Speculation.

"Monsieur," said a wise political economist, the director-cashier-
manager and secretary-general of a celebrated fire-insurance company,
"out of every five hundred thousand francs of policies to be renewed
in the provinces, not more than fifty thousand are paid up
voluntarily. The other four hundred and fifty thousand are got in by
the activity of our agents, who go about among those who are in
arrears and worry them with stories of horrible incendiaries until
they are driven to sign the new policies. Thus you see that eloquence,
the labial flux, is nine tenths of the ways and means of our
business."

To talk, to make people listen to you,--that is seduction in itself. A
nation that has two Chambers, a woman who lends both ears, are soon
lost. Eve and her serpent are the everlasting myth of an hourly fact
which began, and may end, with the world itself.

"A conversation of two hours ought to capture your man," said a
retired lawyer.