THE ILLUSTRIOUS GAUDISSART
Page: 10

prodigious; so that he was able to start on his peregrinations by the
15th of April, the date at which he usually opened the spring
campaign. Two large commercial houses, alarmed at the decline of
business, implored the ambitious Gaudissart not to desert the article
Paris, and seduced him, it was said, with large offers, to take their
commissions once more. The king of travellers was amenable to the
claims of his old friends, enforced as they were by the enormous
premiums offered to him.

* * * * *

"Listen, my little Jenny," he said in a hackney-coach to a pretty
florist.

All truly great men delight in allowing themselves to be tyrannized
over by a feeble being, and Gaudissart had found his tyrant in Jenny.
He was bringing her home at eleven o'clock from the Gymnase, whither
he had taken her, in full dress, to a proscenium box on the first
tier.

"On my return, Jenny, I shall refurnish your room in superior style.
That big Matilda, who pesters you with comparisons and her real India
shawls imported by the suite of the Russian ambassador, and her silver
plate and her Russian prince,--who to my mind is nothing but a humbug,
--won't have a word to say THEN. I consecrate to the adornment of your
room all the 'Children' I shall get in the provinces."

"Well, that's a pretty thing to say!" cried the florist. "Monster of a
man! Do you dare to talk to me of your children? Do you suppose I am
going to stand that sort of thing?"

"Oh, what a goose you are, my Jenny! That's only a figure of speech in
our business."

"A fine business, then!"

"Well, but listen; if you talk all the time you'll always be in the
right."

"I mean to be. Upon my word, you take things easy!"

"You don't let me finish. I have taken under my protection a
superlative idea,--a journal, a newspaper, written for children. In
our profession, when travellers have caught, let us suppose, ten
subscribers to the 'Children's Journal,' they say, 'I've got ten
Children,' just as I say when I get ten subscriptions to a newspaper
called the 'Movement,' 'I've got ten Movements.' Now don't you see?"