Gaudissart II | Page 4

great ladies hesitated. Choice is a mental lightning flash;
hesitate--there is no more to be said, you are at fault. Inspiration in
matters of taste will not come twice. At last, after about ten minutes the
Prince was called in. He saw the two duchesses confronting doubt with
its thousand facets, unable to decide between the transcendent merits of
two of the trinkets, for the third had been set aside at once. Without
leaving his book, without a glance at the bracelets, the Prince looked at
the jeweler's assistant.
"Which would you choose for your sweetheart?" asked he.
The young man indicated one of the pair.
"In that case, take the other, you will make two women happy," said the
subtlest of modern diplomatists, "and make your sweetheart happy too,
in my name."
The two fair ladies smiled, and the young shopman took his departure,
delighted with the Prince's present and the implied compliment to his
taste.
A woman alights from her splendid carriage before one of the
expensive shops where shawls are sold in the Rue Vivienne. She is not
alone; women almost always go in pairs on these expeditions; always
make the round of half a score of shops before they make up their
minds, and laugh together in the intervals over the little comedies

played for their benefit. Let us see which of the two acts most in
character--the fair customer or the seller, and which has the best of it in
such miniature vaudevilles?
If you attempt to describe a sale, the central fact of Parisian trade, you
are in duty bound, if you attempt to give the gist of the matter, to
produce a type, and for this purpose a shawl or a chatelaine costing
some three thousand francs is a more exacting purchase than a length of
lawn or dress that costs three hundred. But know, oh foreign visitors
from the Old World and the New (if ever this study of the physiology
of the Invoice should be by you perused), that this selfsame comedy is
played in haberdashers' shops over a barege at two francs or a printed
muslin at four francs the yard.
And you, princess, or simple citizen's wife, whichever you may be,
how should you distrust that good-looking, very young man, with those
frank, innocent eyes, and a cheek like a peach covered with down? He
is dressed almost as well as your--cousin, let us say. His tones are soft
as the woolen stuffs which he spreads before you. There are three or
four more of his like. One has dark eyes, a decided expression, and an
imperial manner of saying, "This is what you wish"; another, that
blue-eyed youth, diffident of manner and meek of speech, prompts the
remark, "Poor boy! he was not born for business"; a third, with light
auburn hair, and laughing tawny eyes, has all the lively humor, and
activity, and gaiety of the South; while the fourth, he of the tawny red
hair and fan-shaped beard, is rough as a communist, with his portentous
cravat, his sternness, his dignity, and curt speech.
These varieties of shopmen, corresponding to the principal types of
feminine customers, are arms, as it were, directed by the head, a stout
personage with a full-blown countenance, a partially bald forehead, and
a chest measure befitting a Ministerialist deputy. Occasionally this
person wears the ribbon of the Legion of Honor in recognition of the
manner in which he supports the dignity of the French drapers' wand.
From the comfortable curves of his figure you can see that he has a
wife and family, a country house, and an account with the Bank of
France. He descends like a deux ex machina, whenever a tangled
problem demands a swift solution. The feminine purchasers are
surrounded on all sides with urbanity, youth, pleasant manners, smiles,
and jests; the most seeming-simple human products of civilization are

here, all sorted in shades to suit all tastes.
Just one word as to the natural effects of architecture, optical science,
and house decoration; one short, decisive, terrible word, of history
made on the spot. The work which contains this instructive page is sold
at number 76 Rue de Richelieu, where above an elegant shop, all white
and gold and crimson velvet, there is an entresol into which the light
pours straight from the Rue de Menars, as into a painter's studio--clean,
clear, even daylight. What idler in the streets has not beheld the Persian,
that Asiatic potentate, ruffling it above the door at the corner of the Rue
de la Bourse and the Rue de Richelieu, with a message to deliver urbi
et orbi, "Here I reign more tranquilly than at Lahore"? Perhaps but for
this immortal analytical study, archaeologists might begin to puzzle
their heads about him five