"Well,"said Lousteau,"shall we go on with our business?""Eh!my boy,"returned Barbet in a familiar tone;"I have six thousand volumes of stock on hand at my place,and paper is not gold,as the old bookseller said.Trade is dull.""If you went into his shop,my dear Lucien,"said Etienne,turning to his friend,"you would see an oak counter from some bankrupt wine merchant's sale,and a tallow dip,never snuffed for fear it should burn too quickly,making darkness visible.By that anomalous light you descry rows of empty shelves with some difficulty.An urchin in a blue blouse mounts guard over the emptiness,and blows his fingers,and shuffles his feet,and slaps his chest,like a cabman on the box.Just look about you!there are no more books there than I have here.Nobody could guess what kind of shop he keeps.""Here is a bill at three months for a hundred francs,"said Barbet,and he could not help smiling as he drew it out of his pocket;"I will take your old books off your hands.I can't pay cash any longer,you see;sales are too slow.I thought that you would be wanting me;I had not a penny,and I made a bill simply to oblige you,for I am not fond of giving my signature.""So you want my thanks and esteem into the bargain,do you?""Bills are not met with sentiment,"responded Barbet;"but I will accept your esteem,all the same.""But I want gloves,and the perfumers will be base enough to decline your paper,"said Lousteau."Stop,there is a superb engraving in the top drawer of the chest there,worth eighty francs,proof before letters and after letterpress,for I have written a pretty droll article upon it.There was something to lay hold of in Hippocrates refusing the Presents of Artaxerxes.A fine engraving,eh?Just the thing to suit all the doctors,who are refusing the extravagant gifts of Parisian satraps.You will find two or three dozen novels underneath it.Come,now,take the lot and give me forty francs.""FORTY FRANCS!"exclaimed the bookseller,emitting a cry like the squall of a frightened fowl."Twenty at the very most!And then I may never see the money again,"he added.
"Where are your twenty francs?"asked Lousteau.
"My word,I don't know that I have them,"said Barbet,fumbling in his pockets."Here they are.You are plundering me;you have an ascendency over me----""Come,let us be off,"said Lousteau,and taking up Lucien's manu,he drew a line upon it in ink under the string.
"Have you anything else?"asked Barbet.
"Nothing,you young Shylock.I am going to put you in the way of a bit of very good business,"Etienne continued ("in which you shall lose a thousand crowns,to teach you to rob me in this fashion"),he added for Lucien's ear.
"But how about your reviews?"said Lucien,as they rolled away to the Palais Royal.
"Pooh!you do not know how reviews are knocked off.As for the Travels in Egypt,I looked into the book here and there (without cutting the pages),and I found eleven slips in grammar.I shall say that the writer may have mastered the dicky-bird language on the flints that they call 'obelisks'out there in Egypt,but he cannot write in his own,as I will prove to him in a column and a half.I shall say that instead of giving us the natural history and archaeology,he ought to have interested himself in the future of Egypt,in the progress of civilization,and the best method of strengthening the bond between Egypt and France.France has won and lost Egypt,but she may yet attach the country to her interests by gaining a moral ascendency over it.Then some patriotic penny-a-lining,interlarded with diatribes on Marseilles,the Levant and our trade.""But suppose that he had taken that view,what would you do?""Oh well,I should say that instead of boring us with politics,he should have written about art,and described the picturesque aspects of the country and the local color.Then the critic bewails himself.
Politics are intruded everywhere;we are weary of politics--politics on all sides.I should regret those charming books of travel that dwelt upon the difficulties of navigation,the fascination of steering between two rocks,the delights of crossing the line,and all the things that those who never will travel ought to know.Mingle this approval with scoffing at the travelers who hail the appearance of a bird or a flying-fish as a great event,who dilate upon fishing,and make trans from the log.Where,you ask,is that perfectly unintelligible scientific information,fascinating,like all that is profound,mysterious,and incomprehensible.The reader laughs,that is all that he wants.As for novels,Florine is the greatest novel reader alive;she gives me a synopsis,and I take her opinion and put a review together.When a novelist bores her with 'author's stuff,'as she calls it,I treat the work respectfully,and ask the publisher for another copy,which he sends forthwith,delighted to have a favorable review.""Goodness!and what of criticism,the critic's sacred office?"cried Lucien,remembering the ideas instilled into him by the brotherhood.
"My dear fellow,"said Lousteau,"criticism is a kind of brush which must not be used upon flimsy stuff,or it carries it all away with it.
That is enough of the craft,now listen!Do you see that mark?"he continued,pointing to the manu of the Marguerites."I have put ink on the string and paper.If Dauriat reads your manu,he certainly could not tie the string and leave it just as it was before.
