Pate de Regnauld, and Brazilian Mixture, and all the other inventions which had the genius to comprehend journalistic influence and the suction power that reiterated newspaper articles have upon the public mind.  In these early days of their innocence many journalists were like cattle; they were unaware of their inborn power; their heads were full of actresses,—­Florine, Tullia, Mariette, etc.  They laid down the law to everybody, but they picked up nothing for themselves.  As Finot’s schemes did not concern actresses who wanted applause, nor plays to be puffed, nor vaudevilles to be accepted, nor articles which had to be paid for,—­on the contrary, he paid money on occasion, and gave timely breakfasts,—­there was soon not a newspaper in Paris which did not mention Cephalic Oil, and call attention to its remarkable concurrence with the principles of Vauquelin’s analysis; ridiculing all those who thought hair could be made to grow, and proclaiming the danger of dyeing it.

These articles rejoiced the soul of Gaudissart, who used them as ammunition to destroy prejudices, bringing to bear upon the provinces what his successors have since named, in honor of him, “the charge of the tongue-battery.”  In those days Parisian newspapers ruled the departments, which were still (unhappy regions!) without local organs.  The papers were therefore soberly studied, from the title to the name of the printer,—­a last line which may have hidden the ironies of persecuted opinion.  Gaudissart, thus backed up by the press, met with startling success from the very first town which he favored with his tongue.  Every shopkeeper in the provinces wanted the gilt frames, and the prospectuses with Hero and Leander at the top of them.

In Paris, Finot fired at Macassar Oil that delightful joke which made people so merry at the Funambules, when Pierrot, taking an old hair-broom, anointed it with Macassar Oil, and the broom incontinently became a mop.  This ironical scene excited universal laughter.  Finot gaily related in after days that without the thousand crowns he earned through Cephalic Oil he should have died of misery and despair.  To him a thousand crowns was fortune.  It was in this campaign that he guessed —­let him have the honor of being the first to do so—­the illimitable power of advertisement, of which he made so great and so judicious a use.  Three months later he became editor-in-chief of a little journal which he finally bought, and which laid the foundation of his ultimate success.  Just as the tongue-battery of the illustrious Gaudissart, that Murat of travellers, when brought to bear upon the provinces and the frontiers, made the house of A. Popinot and Company a triumphant mercantile success in the country regions, so likewise did Cephalic Oil triumph in Parisian opinion, thanks to Finot’s famishing assault upon the newspapers, which gave it as much publicity as that obtained by Brazilian Mixture and the Pate de Regnauld.  From