"If any subscribers come,you see them and take note of them,Mother Chollet.--Simply subscribers,never know anything but subscribers,"he added,seeing that Lucien followed him."Finot is my nephew;he is the only one of my family that has done anything to relieve me in my position.So when anybody comes to pick a quarrel with Finot,he finds old Giroudeau,Captain of the Dragoons of the Guard,that set out as a private in a cavalry regiment in the army of the Sambre-et-Meuse,and was fencing-master for five years to the First Hussars,army of Italy!
One,two,and the man that had any complaints to make would be turned off into the dark,"he added,making a lunge."Now writers,my boy,are in different corps;there is the writer who writes and draws his pay;there is the writer who writes and gets nothing (a volunteer we call him);and,lastly,there is the writer who writes nothing,and he is by no means the stupidest,for he makes no mistakes;he gives himself out for a literary man,he is on the paper,he treats us to dinners,he loafs about the theatres,he keeps an actress,he is very well off.What do you mean to be?""The man that does good work and gets good pay.""You are like the recruits.They all want to be marshals of France.
Take old Giroudeau's word for it,and turn right about,in double-quick time,and go and pick up nails in the gutter like that good fellow yonder;you can tell by the look of him that he has been in the army.--Isn't it a shame that an old soldier who has walked into the jaws of death hundreds of times should be picking up old iron in the streets of Paris?Ah!God A'mighty!'twas a shabby trick to desert the Emperor.--Well,my boy,the individual you saw this morning has made his forty francs a month.Are you going to do better?And,according to Finot,he is the cleverest man on the staff.""When you enlisted in the Sambre-et-Meuse,did they talk about danger?""Rather."
"Very well?"
"Very well.Go and see my nephew Finot,a good fellow,as good a fellow as you will find,if you can find him,that is,for he is like a fish,always on the move.In his way of business,there is no writing,you see,it is setting others to write.That sort like gallivanting about with actresses better than scribbling on sheets of paper,it seems.Oh!they are queer customers,they are.Hope I may have the honor of seeing you again."With that the cashier raised his formidable loaded cane,one of the defenders of Germainicus,and walked off,leaving Lucien in the street,as much bewildered by this picture of the newspaper world as he had formerly been by the practical aspects of literature at Messrs.
Vidal and Porchon's establishment.
Ten several times did Lucien repair to the Rue Feydeau in search of Andoche Finot,and ten times he failed to find that gentleman.He went first thing in the morning;Finot had not come in.At noon,Finot had gone out;he was breakfasting at such and such a cafe.At the cafe,in answer to inquiries of the waitress,made after surmounting unspeakable repugnance,Lucien heard that Finot had just left the place.Lucien,at length tired out,began to regard Finot as a mythical and fabulous character;it appeared simpler to waylay Etienne Lousteau at Flicoteaux's.That youthful journalist would,doubtless,explain the mysteries that enveloped the paper for which he wrote.
Since the day,a hundred times blessed,when Lucien made the acquaintance of Daniel d'Arthez,he had taken another seat at Flicoteaux's.The two friends dined side by side,talking in lowered voices of the higher literature,of suggested subjects,and ways of presenting,opening up,and developing them.At the present time Daniel d'Arthez was correcting the manu of The Archer of Charles IX.He reconstructed whole chapters,and wrote the fine passages found therein,as well as the magnificent preface,which is,perhaps,the best thing in the book,and throws so much light on the work of the young school of literature.One day it so happened that Daniel had been waiting for Lucien,who now sat with his friend's hand in his own,when he saw Etienne Lousteau turn the door-handle.Lucien instantly dropped Daniel's hand,and told the waiter that he would dine at his old place by the counter.D'Arthez gave Lucien a glance of divine kindness,in which reproach was wrapped in forgiveness.The glance cut the poet to the quick;he took Daniel's hand and grasped it anew.
"It is an important question of business for me;I will tell you about it afterwards,"said he.
Lucien was in his old place by the time that Lousteau reached the table;as the first comer,he greeted his acquaintance;they soon struck up a conversation,which grew so lively that Lucien went off in search of the manu of the Marguerites,while Lousteau finished his dinner.He had obtained leave to lay his sonnets before the journalist,and mistook the civility of the latter for willingness to find him a publisher,or a place on the paper.When Lucien came hurrying back again,he saw d'Arthez resting an elbow on the table in a corner of the restaurant,and knew that his friend was watching him with melancholy eyes,but he would not see d'Arthez just then;he felt the sharp pangs of poverty,the goadings of ambition,and followed Lousteau.
In the late afternoon the journalist and the neophyte went to the Luxembourg,and sat down under the trees in that part of the gardens which lies between the broad Avenue de l'Observatoire and the Rue de l'Ouest.The Rue de l'Ouest at that time was a long morass,bounded by planks and market-gardens;the houses were all at the end nearest the Rue de Vaugirard;and the walk through the gardens was so little frequented,that at the hour when Paris dines,two lovers might fall out and exchange the earnest of reconciliation without fear of intruders.The only possible spoil-sport was the pensioner on duty at the little iron gate on the Rue de l'Ouest,if that gray-headed veteran should take it into his head to lengthen his monotonous beat.
