THE ILLUSTRIOUS GAUDISSART
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[*] "Se gaudir," to enjoy, to make fun. "Gaudriole," gay discourse,
rather free.--Littre.

When buckled down to his work he became the slyest and cleverest of
diplomats. All things to all men, he knew how to accost a banker like
a capitalist, a magistrate like a functionary, a royalist with pious
and monarchical sentiments, a bourgeois as one of themselves. In
short, wherever he was he was just what he ought to be; he left
Gaudissart at the door when he went in, and picked him up when he came
out.

Until 1830 the illustrious Gaudissart was faithful to the article
Paris. In his close relation to the caprices of humanity, the varied
paths of commerce had enabled him to observe the windings of the heart
of man. He had learned the secret of persuasive eloquence, the knack
of loosening the tightest purse-strings, the art of rousing desire in
the souls of husbands, wives, children, and servants; and what is
more, he knew how to satisfy it. No one had greater faculty than he
for inveigling a merchant by the charms of a bargain, and disappearing
at the instant when desire had reached its crisis. Full of gratitude
to the hat-making trade, he always declared that it was his efforts in
behalf of the exterior of the human head which had enabled him to
understand its interior: he had capped and crowned so many people, he
was always flinging himself at their heads, etc. His jokes about hats
and heads were irrepressible, though perhaps not dazzling.

Nevertheless, after August and October, 1830, he abandoned the hat
trade and the article Paris, and tore himself from things mechanical
and visible to mount into the higher spheres of Parisian speculation.
"He forsook," to use his own words, "matter for mind; manufactured
products for the infinitely purer elaborations of human intelligence."
This requires some explanation.

The general upset of 1830 brought to birth, as everybody knows, a
number of old ideas which clever speculators tried to pass off in new
bodies. After 1830 ideas became property. A writer, too wise to
publish his writings, once remarked that "more ideas are stolen than
pocket-handkerchiefs." Perhaps in course of time we may have an