bats.' I said
to myself, 'Now for my rostrum eloquence. He is tied to the
dynasty; I'll cook him; this triumph will be capital practice for
my ministerial talents.' So I went to work and praised his
'Debats.' Hein! if I didn't lead him along! Thread by thread, I
began to net my man. I launched my four-horse phrases, and the F-
sharp arguments, and all the rest of the cursed stuff. Everybody
listened; and I saw a man who had July as plain as day on his
mustache, just ready to nibble at a 'Movement.' Well, I don't know
how it was, but I unluckily let fall the word 'blockhead.'
Thunder! you should have seen my gray hat, my dynastic hat
(shocking bad hat, anyhow), who got the bit in his teeth and was
furiously angry. I put on my grand air--you know--and said to him:
'Ah, ca! Monsieur, you are remarkably aggressive; if you are not
content, I am ready to give you satisfaction; I fought in July.'
'Though the father of a family,' he replied, 'I am ready--'
'Father of a family!' I exclaimed; 'my dear sir, have you any
children?' 'Yes.' 'Twelve years old?' 'Just about.' 'Well, then,
the "Children's Journal" is the very thing for you; six francs a
year, one number a month, double columns, edited by great literary
lights, well got up, good paper, engravings from charming sketches
by our best artists, actual colored drawings of the Indies--will
not fade.' I fired my broadside 'feelings of a father, etc.,
etc.,'--in short, a subscription instead of a quarrel. 'There's
nobody but Gaudissart who can get out of things like that,' said
that little cricket Lamard to the big Bulot at the cafe, when he
told him the story.

"I leave to-morrow for Amboise. I shall do up Amboise in two days,
and I will write next from Tours, where I shall measure swords
with the inhabitants of that colorless region; colorless, I mean,
from the intellectual and speculative point of view. But, on the
word of a Gaudissart, they shall be toppled over, toppled down--
floored, I say.

"Adieu, my kitten. Love me always; be faithful; fidelity through
thick and thin is one of the attributes of the Free Woman. Who is
kissing you on the eyelids?

"Thy Felix Forever."

CHAPTER III

Five days later Gaudissart started from the Hotel des Faisans, at
which he had put up in Tours, and went to Vouvray, a rich and populous
district where the public mind seemed to him susceptible of cultivation.