-well-met of the provinces. He is the link which
connects the village with the capital; though essentially he is neither
Parisian nor provincial,--he is a traveller. He sees nothing to the
core: men and places he knows by their names; as for things, he looks
merely at their surface, and he has his own little tape-line with which
to measure them. His glance shoots over all things and penetrates none.
He occupies himself with a great deal, yet nothing occupies him.

Jester and jolly fellow, he keeps on good terms with all political
opinions, and is patriotic to the bottom of his soul. A capital mimic,
he knows how to put on, turn and turn about, the smiles of persuasion,
satisfaction, and good-nature, or drop them for the normal expression of
his natural man. He is compelled to be an observer of a certain sort in
the interests of his trade. He must probe men with a glance and guess
their habits, wants, and above all their solvency. To economize time he
must come to quick decisions as to his chances of success,--a practice
that makes him more or less a man of judgment; on the strength of which
he sets up as a judge of theatres, and discourses about those of Paris
and the provinces.

He knows all the good and bad haunts in France, "de actu et visu." He
can pilot you, on occasion, to vice or virtue with equal assurance.
Blest with the eloquence of a hot-water spigot turned on at will, he can
check or let run, without floundering, the collection of phrases which
he keeps on tap, and which produce upon his victims the effect of a
moral shower-bath. Loquacious as a cricket, he smokes, drinks, wears a
profusion of trinkets, overawes the common people, passes for a lord
in the villages, and never permits himself to be "stumped,"--a slang
expression all his own. He knows how to slap his pockets at the right
time, and make his money jingle if he thinks the servants of the
second-class houses which he wants to enter (always eminently
suspicious) are likely to take him for a thief. Activity is not the
least surprising quality of this human machine. Not the hawk swooping
upon its prey, not the stag doubling before the huntsman and the hounds,
nor the hounds themselves catching scent of the game, can be compared
with him for the rapidity of his dart when he spies a "commission," for
the agility with which he trips up a rival and gets ahead of him, for
the keenness of his scent as he noses a customer and discovers the sport
where he ca