Worse than all is the rape
of ideas which these caterers for the public mind, like the
slave-merchants of Asia, tear from the paternal brain before they are
well matured, and drag half-clothed before the eyes of their blockhead
of a sultan, their Shahabaham, their terrible public, which, if they
don't amuse it, will cut off their heads by curtailing the ingots and
emptying their pockets.
This madness of our epoch reacted upon the illustrious Gaudissart, and
here follows the history of how it happened. A life-insurance company
having been told of his irresistible eloquence offered him an
unheard-of commission, which he graciously accepted. The bargain
concluded and the treaty signed, our traveller was put in training, or
we might say weaned, by the secretary-general of the enterprise, who
freed his mind of its swaddling-clothes, showed him the dark holes of
the business, taught him its dialect, took the mechanism apart bit by
bit, dissected for his instruction the particular public he was
expected to gull, crammed him with phrases, fed him with impromptu
replies, provisioned him with unanswerable arguments, and, so to speak,
sharpened the file of the tongue which was about to operate upon the
life of France.
The puppet amply rewarded the pains bestowed upon him. The heads of
the company boasted of the illustrious Gaudissart, showed him such
attention and proclaimed the great talents of this perambulating
prospectus so loudly in the sphere of exalted banking and commercial
diplomacy, that the financial managers of two newspapers (celebrated
at that time but since defunct) were seized with the idea of employing
him to get subscribers.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25