to Monsieur Lousteau that I discovered that I had not been
loved for my own sake."

And what noble speeches she uttered, on man, on the nature of his
feelings, on the end of his base passions, and so forth. Of Dinah's
three worshipers, Monsieur de Clagny only said to her: "I love you, come
what may"--and Dinah accepted him as her confidant, lavished on him all
the marks of friendship which women can devise for the Gurths who are
ready thus to wear the collar of gilded slavery.

In Paris once more, Lousteau had, in a few weeks, lost the impression of
the happy time he had spent at the Chateau d'Anzy. This is why: Lousteau
lived by his pen.

In this century, especially since the triumph of the _bourgeoisie_--the
commonplace, money-saving citizen--who takes good care not to imitate
Francis I. or Louis XIV.--to live by the pen is a form of penal
servitude to which a galley-slave would prefer death. To live by the pen
means to create--to create to-day, and to-morrow, and incessantly--or
to seem to create; and the imitation costs as dear as the reality. So,
besides his daily contribution to a newspaper, which was like the
stone of Sisyphus, and which came every Monday, crashing down on to the
feather of his pen, Etienne worked for three or four literary magazines.
Still, do not be alarmed; he put no artistic conscientiousness into his
work. This man of Sancerre had a facility, a carelessness, if you call
it so, which ranked him with those writers who are mere scriveners,
literary hacks. In Paris, in our day, hack-work cuts a man off from
every pretension to a literary position. When he can do no more, or no
longer cares for advancement, the man who can write becomes a journalist
and a hack.

The life he leads is not unpleasing. Blue-stockings, beginners in
every walk of life, actresses at the outset or the close of a career,
publishers and authors, all make much of these writers of the ready
pen. Lousteau, a thorough man about town, lived at scarcely any expense
beyond paying his rent. He had boxes at all the theatres; the sale of
the books he reviewed or left unreviewed paid for his gloves; and he
would say to those authors who published at their own expense, "I have
your book always in my hands!" He took toll from vanity in the form of
drawings or pictures. Every day had its engagements to dinner, every
night its theatre, every morning was filled up with callers, visits,
and lounging. His serial in the paper, two no