“Hold your tongue, young woman!” he said.  “What do you know about Saint-Simonism, antagonism, Fourierism, criticism, heroic enterprise, or woman’s freedom?  I’ll tell you what they are,—­ten francs for each subscription, Madame Gaudissart.”

“On my word of honor, you are going crazy, Gaudissart.”

“More and more crazy about you,” he replied, flinging his hat upon the sofa.

The next morning Gaudissart, having breakfasted gloriously with Jenny, departed on horseback to work up the chief towns of the district to which he was assigned by the various enterprises in whose interests he was now about to exercise his great talents.  After spending forty-five days in beating up the country between Paris and Blois, he remained two weeks at the latter place to write up his correspondence and make short visits to the various market towns of the department.  The night before he left Blois for Tours he indited a letter to Mademoiselle Jenny Courand.  As the conciseness and charm of this epistle cannot be equalled by any narration of ours, and as, moreover, it proves the legitimacy of the tie which united these two individuals, we produce it here:—­

“My dear Jenny,—­You will lose your wager.  Like Napoleon, Gaudissart the illustrious has his star, but not his Waterloo.  I triumph everywhere.  Life insurance has done well.  Between Paris and Blois I lodged two millions.  But as I get to the centre of France heads become infinitely harder and millions correspondingly scarce.  The article Paris keeps up its own little jog-trot.  It is a ring on the finger.  With all my well-known cunning I spit these shop-keepers like larks.  I got off one hundred and sixty-two Ternaux shawls at Orleans.  I am sure I don’t know what they will do with them, unless they return them to the backs of the sheep.

“As to the article journal—­the devil! that’s a horse of another color.  Holy saints! how one has to warble before you can teach these bumpkins a new tune.  I have only made sixty-two ‘Movements’:  exactly a hundred less for the whole trip than the shawls in one town.  Those republican rogues! they won’t subscribe.  They talk, they talk; they share your opinions, and presently you are all agreed that every existing thing must be overturned.  You feel sure your man is going to subscribe.  Not a bit of it!  If he owns three feet of ground, enough to grow ten cabbages, or a few trees to slice into toothpicks, the fellow begins to talk of consolidated property, taxes, revenues, indemnities,—­a whole lot of stuff, and I have wasted my time and breath on patriotism.  It’s a bad business!  Candidly, the ‘Movement’ does not move.  I have written to the directors and told them so.  I am sorry for it—­on account of my political opinions.

“As for the ‘Globe,’ that’s another breed altogether.  Just set to work and talk new doctrines to people you fancy are fools enough to believe such lies,—­why,