the great
doctor as the only possible candidate at the ensuing elections. But
Bianchon, to the great satisfaction of the new Sous-prefet, remarked
that it seemed to him almost impossible to give up science in favor of
politics.

"Only a physician without a practice," said he, "could care to be
returned as a deputy. Nominate statesmen, thinkers, men whose knowledge
is universal, and who are capable of placing themselves on the high
level which a legislator should occupy. That is what is lacking in our
Chambers, and what our country needs."

Two or three young ladies, some of the younger men, and the elder women
stared at Lousteau as if he were a mountebank.

"Monsieur Gatien Boirouge declares that Monsieur Lousteau makes twenty
thousand francs a year by his writings," observed the Mayor's wife to
Madame de Clagny. "Can you believe it?"

"Is it possible? Why, a Public Prosecutor gets but a thousand crowns!"

"Monsieur Gatien," said Madame Chandier, "get Monsieur Lousteau to talk
a little louder. I have not heard him yet."

"What pretty boots he wears," said Mademoiselle Chandier to her brother,
"and how they shine!"

"Yes--patent leather."

"Why haven't you the same?"

Lousteau began to feel that he was too much on show, and saw in the
manners of the good townsfolk indications of the desires that had
brought them there.

"What trick can I play them?" thought he.

At this moment the footman, so called--a farm-servant put into
livery--brought in the letters and papers, and among them a packet
of proof, which the journalist left for Bianchon; for Madame de la
Baudraye, on seeing the parcel, of which the form and string were
obviously from the printers, exclaimed:

"What, does literature pursue you even here?"

"Not literature," replied he, "but a review in which I am now finishing
a story to come out ten days hence. I have reached the stage of '_To
be concluded in our next_,' so I was obliged to give my address to
the printer. Oh, we eat very hard-earned bread at the hands of these
speculators in black and white! I will give you a description of these
editors of magazines."

"When will the conversation begin?" Madame de Clagny asked of Dinah, as
one might ask, "When do the fireworks go off?"

"I fancied we should hear some amusing stories," said Madame Popinot to
her cousin, the Presidente Boirouge.

At this moment, when the good folks of Sancerre were beginning to murmur
like an impatient pit, Lousteau