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.
Mounted upon his horse, he trotted along the embankment thinking no more
of his phrases than an actor thinks of his part which he has played for
a hundred times. It was thus that the illustrious Gaudissart went his
cheerful way, admiring the landscape, and little dreaming that in the
happy valleys of Vouvray his commercial infallibility was about to
perish.

Here a few remarks upon the public mind of Touraine are essential to our
story. The subtle, satirical, epigrammatic tale-telling spirit stamped
on every page of Rabelais is the faithful expression of the Tourangian
mind,--a mind polished and refined as it should be in a land where
the kings of France long held their court; ardent, artistic, poetic,
voluptuous, yet whose first impulses subside quickly. The softness of
the atmosphere, the beauty of the climate, a certain ease of life and
joviality of manners, smother before long the sentiment of art, narrow
the widest heart, and enervate the strongest will. Transplant the
Tourangian, and his fine qualities develop and lead to great results, as
we may see in many spheres of action: look at Rabelais and Semblancay,
Plantin the printer and Descartes, Boucicault, the Napoleon of his day,
and Pinaigrier, who painted most of the colored glass in our cathedrals;
also Verville and Courier. But the Tourangian, distinguished though he
may be in other regions, sits in his own home like an Indian on his mat
or a Turk on his divan. He employs his wit in laughing at his neighbor
and in making merry all his days; and when at last he reaches the end
of