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    The Illustrious Gaudissart
    The Illustrious Gaudissart
    The Illustrious Gaudissart
    Ebook84 pages1 hour

    The Illustrious Gaudissart

    By Honoré de Balzac

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    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateNov 27, 2013
    The Illustrious Gaudissart
    Author

    Honoré de Balzac

    Honoré de Balzac nació en 1799 en Tours, donde su padre era jefe de suministros de la división militar. La familia se trasladó a París en 1814. Allí el joven Balzac estudió Derecho, fue pasante de abogado, trabajó en una notaría y empezó a escribir. Fue editor, impresor y propietario de una fundición tipográfica, pero todos estos negocios fracasaron, acarreándole deudas de las que no se vería libre en toda la vida. En 1830 publica seis relatos bajo el título común de Escenas de la vida privada, y en 1831 aparecen otros trece bajo el de Novelas y cuentos filosóficos: en estos volúmenes se encuentra el germen de La comedia humana, ese vasto «conjunto orgánico» de ochenta y cinco novelas sobre la Francia de la primera mitad del siglo XIX, cuyo nacimiento oficial no se produciría hasta 1841, a raíz de un contrato con un grupo de editores. De este célebre ciclo son magníficos ejemplos El pobre Goriot (1835; ALBA CLÁSICA núm. CXXII), La muchacha de los ojos de oro (1835; ALBA BREVIS núm. 8), Grandeza y decadencia de César Birotteu, perfumista (1837), La Casa Nuncingen (1837) (ambas publicadas en un solo volumen en el núm. XXIX de ALBA CLÁSICA MAIOR) y La prima Bette (1846; ALBA CLÁSICA núm. XXI; ALBA MINUS núm. 13). Balzac, autor de una de las obras más influyentes de la literatura universal, murió en París en 1850.

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      The Illustrious Gaudissart - Honoré de Balzac

      Project Gutenberg's The Illustrious Gaudissart, by Honore de Balzac

      This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

      Title: The Illustrious Gaudissart

      Author: Honore de Balzac

      Translator: Katharine Prescott Wormeley

      Release Date: September, 1998 [Etext #1474]

      Posting Date: February 25, 2010

      Language: English

      *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ILLUSTRIOUS GAUDISSART ***

      Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny

      THE ILLUSTRIOUS GAUDISSART

      By Honore De Balzac

      Translated By Katharine Prescott Wormeley

      DEDICATION

      To Madame la Duchesse de Castries.

      THE ILLUSTRIOUS GAUDISSART

      CHAPTER I

      The commercial traveller, a personage unknown to antiquity, is one of the striking figures created by the manners and customs of our present epoch. May he not, in some conceivable order of things, be destined to mark for coming philosophers the great transition which welds a period of material enterprise to the period of intellectual strength? Our century will bind the realm of isolated power, abounding as it does in creative genius, to the realm of universal but levelling might; equalizing all products, spreading them broadcast among the masses, and being itself controlled by the principle of unity,—the final expression of all societies. Do we not find the dead level of barbarism succeeding the saturnalia of popular thought and the last struggles of those civilizations which accumulated the treasures of the world in one direction?

      The commercial traveller! Is he not to the realm of ideas what our stage-coaches are to men and things? He is their vehicle; he sets them going, carries them along, rubs them up with one another. He takes from the luminous centre a handful of light, and scatters it broadcast among the drowsy populations of the duller regions. This human pyrotechnic is a scholar without learning, a juggler hoaxed by himself, an unbelieving priest of mysteries and dogmas, which he expounds all the better for his want of faith. Curious being! He has seen everything, known everything, and is up in all the ways of the world. Soaked in the vices of Paris, he affects to be the fellow-well-met of the provinces. He is the link which connects the village with the capital; though essentially he is neither Parisian nor provincial,—he is a traveller. He sees nothing to the core: men and places he knows by their names; as for things, he looks merely at their surface, and he has his own little tape-line with which to measure them. His glance shoots over all things and penetrates none. He occupies himself with a great deal, yet nothing occupies him.

      Jester and jolly fellow, he keeps on good terms with all political opinions, and is patriotic to the bottom of his soul. A capital mimic, he knows how to put on, turn and turn about, the smiles of persuasion, satisfaction, and good-nature, or drop them for the normal expression of his natural man. He is compelled to be an observer of a certain sort in the interests of his trade. He must probe men with a glance and guess their habits, wants, and above all their solvency. To economize time he must come to quick decisions as to his chances of success,—a practice that makes him more or less a man of judgment; on the strength of which he sets up as a judge of theatres, and discourses about those of Paris and the provinces.

      He knows all the good and bad haunts in France, de actu et visu. He can pilot you, on occasion, to vice or virtue with equal assurance. Blest with the eloquence of a hot-water spigot turned on at will, he can check or let run, without floundering, the collection of phrases which he keeps on tap, and which produce upon his victims the effect of a moral shower-bath. Loquacious as a cricket, he smokes, drinks, wears a profusion of trinkets, overawes the common people, passes for a lord in the villages, and never permits himself to be stumped,—a slang expression all his own. He knows how to slap his pockets at the right time, and make his money jingle if he thinks the servants of the second-class houses which he wants to enter (always eminently suspicious) are likely to take him for a thief. Activity is not the least surprising quality of this human machine. Not the hawk swooping upon its prey, not the stag doubling before the huntsman and the hounds, nor the hounds themselves catching scent of the game, can be compared with him for the rapidity of his dart when he spies a commission, for the agility with which he trips up a rival and gets ahead of him, for the keenness of his scent as he noses a customer and discovers the sport where he can get off his wares.

      How many great qualities must such a man possess! You will find in all countries many such diplomats of low degree; consummate negotiators arguing in the interests of calico, jewels, frippery, wines; and often displaying more true diplomacy than

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