teeth and was furiously angry.  I put on my grand air—­you know—­and said to him:  ’Ah, ca!  Monsieur, you are remarkably aggressive; if you are not content, I am ready to give you satisfaction; I fought in July.’  ‘Though the father of a family,’ he replied, ‘I am ready—­’ ‘Father of a family!’ I exclaimed; ’my dear sir, have you any children?’ ‘Yes.’  ‘Twelve years old?’ ‘Just about.’  ’Well, then, the “Children’s Journal” is the very thing for you; six francs a year, one number a month, double columns, edited by great literary lights, well got up, good paper, engravings from charming sketches by our best artists, actual colored drawings of the Indies—­will not fade.’  I fired my broadside ’feelings of a father, etc., etc.,’—­in short, a subscription instead of a quarrel.  ’There’s nobody but Gaudissart who can get out of 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