Gaudissart II | Page 6

a shawl worth five or six hundred
francs in a cedar-wood box, perfectly plain outside, but lined with satin.
It is one of the shawls that Selim sent to the Emperor Napoleon. It is
our Imperial Guard; it is brought to the front whenever the day is
almost lost; il se vend et ne meurt pas--it sells its life dearly time after
time."
As he spoke, an Englishwoman stepped from her jobbed carriage and
appeared in all the glory of that phlegmatic humor peculiar to Britain
and to all its products which make believe they are alive. The
apparition put you in mind of the Commandant's statue in Don Juan, it
walked along, jerkily by fits and starts, in an awkward fashion invented
in London, and cultivated in every family with patriotic care.
"An Englishwoman!" he continued for Bixiou's ear. "An
Englishwoman is our Waterloo. There are women who slip through our
fingers like eels; we catch them on the staircase. There are lorettes who
chaff us, we join in the laugh, we have a hold on them because we give
credit. There are sphinx-like foreign ladies; we take a quantity of
shawls to their houses, and arrive at an understanding by flattery; but
an Englishwoman!--you might as well attack the bronze statue of Louis
Quatorze! That sort of woman turns shopping into an occupation, an
amusement. She quizzes us, forsooth!"
The romantic assistant came to the front.
"Does madame wish for real Indian shawls or French, something
expensive or----"
"I will see." (Je veraie.)
"How much would madame propose----"
"I will see."
The shopman went in quest of shawls to spread upon the mantle-stand,
giving his colleagues a significant glance. "What a bore!" he said
plainly, with an almost imperceptible shrug of the shoulders.

"These are our best quality in Indian red, blue, and pale orange--all at
ten thousand francs. Here are shawls at five thousand francs, and others
at three."
The Englishwoman took up her eyeglass and looked round the room
with gloomy indifference; then she submitted the three stands to the
same scrutiny, and made no sign.
"Have you any more?" (Havaivod'hote?) demanded she.
"Yes, madame. But perhaps madame has not quite decided to take a
shawl?"
"Oh, quite decided" (trei-deycidai).
The young man went in search of cheaper wares. These he spread out
solemnly as if they were things of price, saying by his manner, "Pay
attention to all this magnificence!"
"These are much more expensive," said he. "They have never been
worn; they have come by courier direct from the manufacturers at
Lahore."
"Oh! I see," said she; "they are much more like the thing I want."
The shopman kept his countenance in spite of inward irritation, which
communicated itself to Duronceret and Bixiou. The Englishwoman,
cool as a cucumber, appeared to rejoice in her phlegmatic humor.
"What price?" she asked, indicating a sky-blue shawl covered with a
pattern of birds nestling in pagodas.
"Seven thousand francs."
She took it up, wrapped it about her shoulders, looked in the glass, and
handed it back again.
"No, I do not like it at all." (Je n'ame pouinte.)
A long quarter of an hour went by in trying on other shawls; to no
purpose.
"This is all we have, madame," said the assistant, glancing at the master
as he spoke.
"Madame is fastidious, like all persons of taste," said the head of the
establishment, coming forward with that tradesman's suavity in which
pomposity is agreeably blended with subservience. The Englishwoman
took up her eyeglass and scanned the manufacturer from head to foot,
unwilling to understand that the man before her was eligible for
Parliament and dined at the Tuileries.
"I have only one shawl left," he continued, "but I never show it. It is not

to everybody's taste; it is quite out of the common. I was thinking of
giving it to my wife. We have had it in stock since 1805; it belonged to
the Empress Josephine."
"Let me see it, monsieur."
"Go for it," said the master, turning to a shopman. "It is at my house."
"I should be very much pleased to see it," said the English lady.
This was a triumph. The splenetic dame was apparently on the point of
going. She made as though she saw nothing but the shawls; but all the
while she furtively watched the shopmen and the two customers,
sheltering her eyes behind the rims of her eyeglasses.
"It cost sixty thousand francs in Turkey, madame."
"Oh!" (hau!)
"It is one of seven shawls which Selim sent, before his fall, to the
Emperor Napoleon. The Empress Josephine, a Creole, as you know, my
lady, and very capricious in her tastes, exchanged this one for another
brought by the Turkish ambassador, and purchased by my predecessor;
but I have never seen