THE ILLUSTRIOUS GAUDISSART
Page: 5

correspondents in the smaller towns made much of him; in Paris, the
great houses feted and caressed him. Welcomed, flattered, and fed
wherever he went, it came to pass that to breakfast or to dine alone
was a novelty, an event. He lived the life of a sovereign, or, better
still, of a journalist; in fact, he was the perambulating "feuilleton"
of Parisian commerce.

His name was Gaudissart; and his renown, his vogue, the flatteries
showered upon him, were such as to win for him the surname of
Illustrious. Wherever the fellow went,--behind a counter or before a
bar, into a salon or to the top of a stage-coach, up to a garret or to
dine with a banker,--every one said, the moment they saw him, "Ah!
here comes the illustrious Gaudissart!"[*] No name was ever so in
keeping with the style, the manners, the countenance, the voice, the
language, of any man. All things smiled upon our traveller, and the
traveller smiled back in return. "Similia similibus,"--he believed in
homoeopathy. Puns, horse-laugh, monkish face, skin of a friar, true
Rabelaisian exterior, clothing, body, mind, and features, all pulled
together to put a devil-may-care jollity into every inch of his
person. Free-handed and easy-going, he might be recognized at once as
the favorite of grisettes, the man who jumps lightly to the top of a
stage-coach, gives a hand to the timid lady who fears to step down,
jokes with the postillion about his neckerchief and contrives to sell
him a cap, smiles at the maid and catches her round the waist or by
the heart; gurgles at dinner like a bottle of wine and pretends to
draw the cork by sounding a filip on his distended cheek; plays a tune
with his knife on the champagne glasses without breaking them, and
says to the company, "Let me see you do THAT"; chaffs the timid
traveller, contradicts the knowing one, lords it over a dinner-table
and manages to get the titbits for himself. A strong fellow,
nevertheless, he can throw aside all this nonsense and mean business
when he flings away the stump of his cigar and says, with a glance at
some town, "I'll go and see what those people have got in their
stomachs."