Well, what do
you think? when I open upon them with such ideas these provincials
lock their cupboards as if I wanted to steal their spoons and beg
me to go away! Are not they fools? geese? The 'Globe' is smashed.
I said to the proprietors, 'You are too advanced, you go ahead too
fast: you ought to get a few results; the provinces like results.'
However, I have made a hundred 'Globes,' and I must say,
considering the thick-headedness of these clodhoppers, it is a
miracle. But to do it I had to make them such a lot of promises
that I am sure I don't know how the globites, globists, globules,
or whatever they call themselves, will ever get out of them. But
they always tell me they can make the world a great deal better
than it is, so I go ahead and prophesy to the value of ten francs
for each subscription. There was one farmer who thought the paper
was agricultural because of its name. I Globed _him_. Bah! he gave
in at once; he had a projecting forehead; all men with projecting
foreheads are ideologists.
"But the 'Children'; oh! ah! as to the 'Children'! I got two
thousand between Paris and Blois. Jolly business! but there is not
much to say. You just show a little vignette to the mother,
pretending to hide it from the child: naturally the child wants to
see, and pulls mamma's gown and cries for its newspaper, because
'Papa has _dot_ his.' Mamma can't let her brat tear the gown; the
gown costs thirty francs, the subscription six--economy; result,
subscription.
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