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 persuasive eloquence, 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.