"Gaudissart II" by Honore de Balzac (1846, A Short Story, A Component of The Human Comedy)

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"Gaudissart II" is a quite brief (reading time under ten minutes) short story about the approach of  salesmen in Paris, specializing in shawls and materials for ladies' dresses, to their female customer.  It is written in a kind of arch mode and shows how the salesmen quickly size up their customers and play on their vanity and such to make a sale.  Some of the shawls seem very expensive and I assume their is a  large Commision on a ten thousand franc shawl.  The narrator describes how all sorts of women come in the shop, from ordinary house wives, women of easy virtue and the very rich.  An experienced salesmen knows how to play each one.  

This was actually a fun story to read and it is a good slice of a small part of the human comedy.

I will next read his novella about working your way ulm in a government agency, Bureaucracy.

Ambrosia Boussweau