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The Illustrious Gaudissart-Part1_Honore de Balzac(1799-1850)_Translated Works(翻译文学)-第2页

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His name was Gaudissart; and his renown, his vogue, the flatteries

showered upon him, were such as to win for him the surname of



Illustrious. Wherever the fellow went,--behind a counter or before a

bar, into a salon or to the top of a stage-coach, up to a garret or to



dine with a banker,--every one said, the moment they saw him, "Ah!

here comes the illustrious Gaudissart!"[*] No name was ever so in



keeping with the style, the manners, the countenance, the voice, the

language, of any man. All things smiled upon our traveller, and the



traveller smiled back in return. "Similia similibus,"--he believed in

homoeopathy. Puns, horse-laugh, monkish face, skin of a friar, true



Rabelaisian exterior, clothing, body, mind, and features, all pulled

together to put a devil-may-care jollity into every inch of his



person. Free-handed and easy-going, he might be recognized at once as

the favorite of grisettes, the man who jumps lightly to the top of a



stage-coach, gives a hand to the timid lady who fears to step down,

jokes with the postillion about his neckerchief and contrives to sell



him a cap, smiles at the maid and catches her round the waist or by

the heart; gurgles at dinner like a bottle of wine and pretends to



draw the cork by sounding a filip on his distended cheek; plays a tune

with his knife on the champagne glasses without breaking them, and



says to the company, "Let me see you do THAT"; chaffs the timid

traveller, contradicts the knowing one, lords it over a dinner-table



and manages to get the titbits for himself. A strong fellow,

nevertheless, he can throw aside all this nonsense and mean business



when he flings away the stump of his cigar and says, with a glance at

some town, "I'll go and see what those people have got in their



stomachs."

[*] "Se gaudir," to enjoy, to make fun. "Gaudriole," gay discourse,



rather free.--Littre.

When buckled down to his work he became the slyest and cleverest of



diplomats. All things to all men, he knew how to accost a banker like

a capitalist, a magistrate like a functionary, a royalist with pious



and monarchical sentiments, a bourgeois as one of themselves. In

short, wherever he was he was just what he ought to be; he left



Gaudissart at the door when he went in, and picked him up when he came

out.



Until 1830 the illustrious Gaudissart was faithful to the article

Paris. In his close relation to the caprices of humanity, the varied



paths of commerce had enabled him to observe the windings of the heart

of man. He had learned the secret of persuasiveeloquence, the knack



of loosening the tightest purse-strings, the art of rousing desire in

the souls of husbands, wives, children, and servants; and what is



more, he knew how to satisfy it. No one had greater faculty than he

for inveigling a merchant by the charms of a bargain, and disappearing



at the instant when desire had reached its crisis. Full of gratitude

to the hat-making trade, he always declared that it was his efforts in



behalf of the exterior of the human head which had enabled him to

understand its interior: he had capped and crowned so many people, he



was always flinging himself at their heads, etc. His jokes about hats

and heads were irrepressible, though perhaps not dazzling.



Nevertheless, after August and October, 1830, he abandoned the hat

trade and the article Paris, and tore himself from things mechanical



and visible to mount into the higher spheres of Parisian speculation.

"He forsook," to use his own words, "matter for mind; manufactured



products for the infinitely purer elaborations of human intelligence."

This requires some explanation.



The general upset of 1830 brought to birth, as everybody knows, a

number of old ideas which clever speculators tried to pass off in new



bodies. After 1830 ideas became property. A writer, too wise to

publish his writings, once remarked that "more ideas are stolen than






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