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A first-rate traveller's trick! Ha! ha! we are the diplomatists of commerce. Famous! As for your prospectus, I'll take charge of that. I've got a friend early childhood Andoche Finot, son of the hat-maker in the Rue du Coq, the old buffer who launched me into travelling on hats.
Finot, our physician and his, at times knew not what to do with him. What embarrassed Finot most, as he related to us more than once, was that M. le Prince would eat nothing, for the simple reason, as he alleged, that he was dead, and that dead men did not eat! It was necessary, however, that he should take something, or he would have really died.
You shall have your Cesarine, or my name shall not be ILLUSTRIOUS, that is what Pere Finot calls me for having got off his gray hats. In selling your oil I keep to my own sphere, the human head; hats and oil are well-known preservatives of the public hair."
"My dear boy, if you had been my brother, I could not have done more for you," retorted Lousteau, somewhat nettled, "but I won't answer for Finot. Scores of sharp fellows will besiege Finot for the next two days with offers to work for low pay. I have promised for you, but you can draw back if you like. You little know how lucky you are," he added after a pause.
"That Finot, without a spark of talent in him, is to be editor of Dauriat's weekly paper, with a salary of six hundred francs per month, and owner of a sixth share, for which he has not paid one penny. And I, my dear fellow, am now editor of our little paper. Everything went off as I expected; Florine managed superbly, she could give points to Tallyrand himself."
Merlin inquired, looking maliciously from Finot to Lucien. A joke is like a bit of thread; if it is spun too fine, it breaks, as Bonaparte said." "Gentlemen," said Lousteau, "we have been eye-witnesses of a strange, portentous, unheard-of, and truly surprising phenomenon. Admire the rapidity with which our friend here has been transformed from a provincial into a journalist!"
Giroudeau let Philippe, who was profuse in his thanks, go down a few steps before him, and then he turned back to say to his nephew, "Well, you are a queer fellow! you keep me here on twelve hundred francs " "That journal won't live a year," said Finot. "I've got something better for you." "Thunder!" cried Philippe to Giroudeau. "He's no fool, that nephew of yours.
I had two good notices put into the Constitutionnel." "Oh! I am not complaining of you," cried the manager. "Good-bye till to-morrow evening, Lousteau," said Finot. "You can give me your answer at the Francais; there is a new piece on there; and as I shall not be able to write the notice, you can take my box. I will give you preference; you have worked yourself to death for me, and I am grateful.
Popinot had promised Finot five hundred francs for every puff in a first-class newspaper, and already there were ten of them; three hundred francs for every second-rate paper, and there were ten of those, in all of them Cephalic Oil was mentioned three times a month! Finot saw three thousand francs for himself out of these eight thousand his first stake on the vast green table of speculation!
Finot wrote a superb comedy in one act for Mademoiselle Mars, most glorious of the glorious! ah, there's a woman I love! Well, in order to get it played he had to take it to the Gaite. Andoche understands prospectuses, he worms himself into the mercantile mind; and he's not proud, he'll concoct it for us gratis.
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