"de Balzac, Honore - Gaudissart 2" - читать интересную книгу автора (Balzac Honore De)

late) the length, the vast spaces, the Babylonish luxury of galleries
where shopkeepers acquire a monopoly of the trade in various articles
by bringing them all together,--all this is as nothing. Everything, so
far, has been done to appeal to a single sense, and that the most
exacting and jaded human faculty, a faculty developed ever since the
days of the Roman Empire, until, in our own times, thanks to the
efforts of the most fastidious civilization the world has yet seen,
its demands are grown limitless. That faculty resides in the "eyes of
Paris."

Those eyes require illuminations costing a hundred thousand francs,
and many-colored glass palaces a couple of miles long and sixty feet
high; they must have a fairyland at some fourteen theatres every
night, and a succession of panoramas and exhibitions of the triumphs
of art; for them a whole world of suffering and pain, and a universe
of joy, must resolve through the boulevards or stray through the
streets of Paris; for them encyclopaedias of carnival frippery and a
score of illustrated books are brought out every year, to say nothing
of caricatures by the hundred, and vignettes, lithographs, and prints
by the thousand. To please those eyes, fifteen thousand francs' worth
of gas must blaze every night; and, to conclude, for their delectation
the great city yearly spends several millions of francs in opening up
views and planting trees. And even yet this is as nothing--it is only
the material side of the question; in truth, a mere trifle compared
with the expenditure of brain power on the shifts, worthy of Moliere,
invented by some sixty thousand assistants and forty thousand damsels
of the counter, who fasten upon the customer's purse, much as myriads
of Seine whitebait fall upon a chance crust floating down the river.

Gaudissart in the mart is at least the equal of his illustrious
namesake, now become the typical commercial traveler. Take him away
from his shop and his line of business, he is like a collapsed
balloon; only among his bales of merchandise do his faculties return,
much as an actor is sublime only upon the boards. A French shopman is
better educated than his fellows in other European countries; he can
at need talk asphalt, Bal Mabille, polkas, literature, illustrated
books, railways, politics, parliament, and revolution; transplant him,
take away his stage, his yardstick, his artificial graces; he is
foolish beyond belief; but on his own boards, on the tight-rope of the
counter, as he displays a shawl with a speech at his tongue's end, and
his eye on his customer, he puts the great Talleyrand into the shade;
he is a match for a Monrose and a Moliere to boot. Talleyrand in his
own house would have outwitted Gaudissart, but in the shop the parts
would have been reversed.

An incident will illustrate the paradox.

Two charming duchesses were chatting with the above-mentioned great
diplomatist. The ladies wished for a bracelet; they were waiting for
the arrival of a man from a great Parisian jeweler. A Gaudissart