L'Illustre Gaudissart is a comic tale that raises the commercial traveler into a literary type. Gaudissart, a truculent traveling salesman and tireless smooth talker full of self-importance, embodies the genius of advertisement and patter, able to sell anything by dint of eloquence and aplomb. Proud of his Parisian successes, he undertakes a tour of Touraine to place newspaper subscriptions and insurance contracts, convinced he will effortlessly hoodwink the provincials he rather despises. But he meets his match. A cunning local, presented as half-mad — Margaritis — plays along and, through a cleverly absurd conversation, turns all the chatterer's own weapons against him: Gaudissart, believing he is concluding a magnificent deal, is mystified and made ridiculous. The affair ends in a quarrel and a grotesque duel, in which the humiliated Parisian salesman must acknowledge that provincial shrewdness has gotten the better of his assurance. Balzac delivers a cheerful satire of modern commerce, of nascent publicity, and of the mercantile spirit, of which Gaudissart is the exuberant emblem. The story playfully sets the Parisian's calculated verve against the tranquil malice of the provinces, reversing the expected roles. Lighter than most of the Scenes of Provincial Life, this text belongs to the sub-cycle of the Parisians in the Provinces, which studies the clash between the capital and the country. By its colorful character, become proverbial, and by its humor, L'Illustre Gaudissart testifies to Balzac's comic talent and to his interest in the new figures thrown up by the rise of commerce and the press under the July Monarchy.