Gaudissart II

by Honore de Balzac
Translated by Clara Bell and others

DEDICATION
To Madame la Princesse Cristina de Belgiojoso, nee Trivulzio.

GAUDISSART II.
To know how to sell, to be able to sell, and to sell. People generally

do not suspect how much of the stateliness of Paris is due to these
three aspects of the same problem. The brilliant display of shops as

rich as the salons of the noblesse before 1789; the splendors of cafes
which eclipse, and easily eclipse, the Versailles of our day; the

shop-window illusions, new every morning, nightly destroyed; the grace
and elegance of the young men that come in contact with fair

customers; the piquant faces and costumes of young damsels, who cannot
fail to attract the masculinecustomer; and (and this especially of

late) the length, the vast spaces, the Babylonish luxury of galleries
where shopkeepers acquire a monopoly of the trade in various articles

by bringing them all together,--all this is as nothing. Everything, so
far, has been done to appeal to a single sense, and that the most

exacting and jaded human faculty, a faculty developed ever since the
days of the Roman Empire, until, in our own times, thanks to the

efforts of the most fastidious civilization the world has yet seen,
its demands are grown limitless. That faculty resides in the "eyes of

Paris."
Those eyes require illuminations costing a hundred thousand francs,

and many-colored glass palaces a couple of miles long and sixty feet
high; they must have a fairyland at some fourteen theatres every

night, and a succession of panoramas and exhibitions of the triumphs
of art; for them a whole world of suffering and pain, and a universe

of joy, must resolve through the boulevards or stray through the
streets of Paris; for them encyclopaedias of carnival frippery and a

score of illustrated books are brought out every year, to say nothing
of caricatures by the hundred, and vignettes, lithographs, and prints

by the thousand. To please those eyes, fifteen thousand francs' worth
of gas must blaze every night; and, to conclude, for their delectation

the great city yearly spends several millions of francs in opening up
views and planting trees. And even yet this is as nothing--it is only

the material side of the question; in truth, a mere trifle compared
with the expenditure of brain power on the shifts, worthy of Moliere,

invented by some sixty thousand assistants and forty thousand damsels
of the counter, who fasten upon the customer's purse, much as myriads

of Seine whitebait fall upon a chance crust floating down the river.
Gaudissart in the mart is at least the equal of his illustrious

namesake, now become the typicalcommercial traveler. Take him away
from his shop and his line of business, he is like a collapsed

balloon; only among his bales of merchandise do his faculties return,
much as an actor is sublime only upon the boards. A French shopman is

better educated than his fellows in other European countries; he can
at need talk asphalt, Bal Mabille, polkas, literature, illustrated

books, railways, politics, parliament, and revolution; transplant him,
take away his stage, his yardstick, his artificial graces; he is

foolish beyond belief; but on his own boards, on the tight-rope of the
counter, as he displays a shawl with a speech at his tongue's end, and

his eye on his customer, he puts the great Talleyrand into the shade;
he is a match for a Monrose and a Moliere to boot. Talleyrand in his

own house would have outwitted Gaudissart, but in the shop the parts
would have been reversed.

An incident will illustrate the paradox.
Two charmingduchesses were chatting with the above-mentioned great

diplomatist. The ladies wished for a bracelet; they were waiting for
the arrival of a man from a great Parisian jeweler. A Gaudissart

accordingly appeared with three bracelets of marvelous workmanship.
The great ladies hesitated. Choice is a mentallightning flash;

hesitate--there is no more to be said, you are at fault. Inspiration
in matters of taste will not come twice. At last, after about ten

minutes the Prince was called in. He saw the two duchesses confronting
doubt with its thousand facets, unable to decide between the

transcendent merits of two of the trinkets, for the third had been set
aside at once. Without leaving his book, without a glance at the

bracelets, the Prince looked at the jeweler's assistant.
"Which would you choose for your sweetheart?" asked he.

The young man indicated one of the pair.
"In that case, take the other, you will make two women happy," said

the subtlest of modern diplomatists, "and make your sweetheart happy
too, in my name."

The two fair ladies smiled, and the young shopman took his departure,
delighted with the Prince's present and the implied compliment to his

taste.
A woman alights from her splendid carriage before one of the expensive

shops where shawls are sold in the Rue Vivienne. She is not alone;
women almost always go in pairs on these expeditions; always make the

round of half a score of shops before they make up their minds, and
laugh together in the intervals over the little comedies played for

their benefit. Let us see which of the two acts most in character--the
fair customer or the seller, and which has the best of it in such

miniature vaudevilles?
If you attempt to describe a sale, the central fact of Parisian trade,

you are in duty bound, if you attempt to give the gist of the matter,
to produce a type, and for this purpose a shawl or a chatelaine

costing some three thousand francs is a more exacting purchase than a
length of lawn or dress that costs three hundred. But know, oh foreign

visitors from the Old World and the New (if ever this study of the
physiology of the Invoice should be by you perused), that this

selfsame comedy is played in haberdashers' shops over a barege at two
francs or a printed muslin at four francs the yard.

And you, princess, or simple citizen's wife, whichever you may be, how
should you distrust that good-looking, very young man, with those

frank, innocent eyes, and a cheek like a peach covered with down? He
is dressed almost as well as your--cousin, let us say. His tones are

soft as the woolen stuffs which he spreads before you. There are three
or four more of his like. One has dark eyes, a decided expression, and

an imperial manner of saying, "This is what you wish"; another, that
blue-eyed youth, diffident of manner and meek of speech, prompts the

remark, "Poor boy! he was not born for business"; a third, with light
auburn hair, and laughing tawny eyes, has all the lively humor, and

activity, and gaiety of the South; while the fourth, he of the tawny
red hair and fan-shaped beard, is rough as a communist, with his

portentous cravat, his sternness, his dignity, and curt speech.
These varieties of shopmen, corresponding to the principal types of

femininecustomers, are arms, as it were, directed by the head, a
stout personage with a full-blown countenance, a partially bald

forehead, and a chest measure befitting a Ministerialist deputy.
Occasionally this person wears the ribbon of the Legion of Honor in

recognition of the manner in which he supports the dignity of the
French drapers' wand. From the comfortable curves of his figure you

can see that he has a wife and family, a country house, and an account
with the Bank of France. He descends like a deux ex machina, whenever

a tangled problem demands a swift solution. The feminine purchasers
are surrounded on all sides with urbanity, youth, pleasant manners,

smiles, and jests; the most seeming-simple human products of
civilization are here, all sorted in shades to suit all tastes.

Just one word as to the natural effects of architecture, optical
science, and house decoration; one short, decisive, terrible word, of

history made on the spot. The work which contains this instructive
page is sold at number 76 Rue de Richelieu, where above an elegant

shop, all white and gold and crimsonvelvet, there is an entresol into
which the light pours straight from the Rue de Menars, as into a

painter's studio--clean, clear, even daylight. What idler in the
streets has not beheld the Persian, that Asiatic potentate, ruffling

it above the door at the corner of the Rue de la Bourse and the Rue de
Richelieu, with a message to deliver urbi et orbi, "Here I reign more

tranquilly than at Lahore"? Perhaps but for this immortal analytical
study, archaeologists might begin to puzzle their heads about him five

hundred years hence, and set about writing quartos with plates (like
M. Quatremere's work on Olympian Jove) to prove that Napoleon was

something of a Sofi in the East before he became "Emperor of the
French." Well, the wealthy shop laid siege to the poor little

entresol; and after a bombardment with banknotes, entered and took
possession. The Human Comedy gave way before the comedy of cashmeres.

The Persian sacrificed a diamond or two from his crown to buy that so
necessary daylight; for a ray of sunlight shows the play of the

colors, brings out the charms of a shawl, and doubles its value; 'tis
an irresistible light; literally, a golden ray. From this fact you may

judge how far Paris shops are arranged with a view to effect.
But to return to the young assistants, to the beribboned man of forty