THE ILLUSTRIOUS GAUDISSART
Page: 34

your botched stuff, cotton and wool, trumpery; flimsy rubbish that
rips if you look at it. It is deep; it states questions on which you
can meditate at your leisure; it is the very thing to make time pass
agreeably in the country."

"That suits me," said the lunatic.

"It only costs a trifle,--eighty francs."

"That won't suit me," said the lunatic.

"Monsieur!" cried Gaudissart, "of course you have got grandchildren?
There's the 'Children's Journal'; that only costs seven francs a
year."

"Very good; take my wine, and I will subscribe to the children. That
suits me very well: a fine idea! intellectual product, child. That's
man living upon man, hein?"

"You've hit it, Monsieur," said Gaudissart.

"I've hit it!"

"You consent to push me in the district?"

"In the district."

"I have your approbation?"

"You have it."

"Well, then, Monsieur, I take your wine at a hundred francs--"

"No, no! hundred and ten--"

"Monsieur! A hundred and ten for the company, but a hundred to me. I
enable you to make a sale; you owe me a commission."

"Charge 'em a hundred and twenty,"--"cent vingt" ("sans vin," without
wine).

"Capital pun that!"

"No, puncheons. About that wine--"

"Better and better! why, you are a wit."

"Yes, I'm that," said the fool. "Come out and see my vineyards."

"Willingly, the wine is getting into my head," said the illustrious
Gaudissart, following Monsieur Margaritis, who marched him from row to
row and hillock to hillock among the vines. The three ladies and
Monsieur Vernier, left to themselves, went off into fits of laughter
as they watched the traveller and the lunatic discussing,
gesticulating, stopping short, resuming their walk, and talking
vehemently.

"I wish the good-man hadn't carried him off," said Vernier.

Finally the pair returned, walking with the eager step of men who were
in haste to finish up a matter of business.

"He has got the better of the Parisian, damn him!" cried Vernier.

And so it was. To the huge delight of the lunatic our illustrious
Gaudissart sat down at a card-table and wrote an order for the