sion. She admired the maxim he preached:

"We are the attorneys of public opinion."

The other kind of criticism is a science. It necessitates a thorough
comprehension of each work, a lucid insight into the tendencies of the
age, the adoption of a system, and faith in fixed principles--that is to
say, a scheme of jurisprudence, a summing-up, and a verdict. The critic
is then a magistrate of ideas, the censor of his time; he fulfils a
sacred function; while in the former case he is but an acrobat who turns
somersaults for a living so long as he had a leg to stand on. Between
Claude Vignon and Lousteau lay the gulf that divides mere dexterity from
art.

Dinah, whose mind was soon freed from rust, and whose intellect was by
no means narrow, had ere long taken literary measure of her idol. She
saw Lousteau working up to the last minute under the most discreditable
compulsion, and scamping his work, as painters say of a picture from
which sound technique is absent; but she would excuse him by saying, "He
is a poet!" so anxious was she to justify him in her own eyes. When she
thus guessed the secret of many a writer's existence, she also guessed
that Lousteau's pen could never be trusted to as a resource.

Then her love for him led her to take a step she would never had thought
of for her own sake. Through her mother she tried to negotiate with her
husband for an allowance, but without Etienne's knowledge; for, as she
thought, it would be an offence to his delicate feelings, which must be
considered. A few days before the end of July, Dinah crumbled up in her
wrath the letter from her mother containing Monsieur de la Baudraye's
ultimatum:

"Madame de la Baudraye cannot need an allowance in Paris when she can
live in perfect luxury at her Chateau of Anzy: she may return."

Lousteau picked up this letter and read it.

"I will avenge you!" said he to Dinah in the ominous tone that delights
a woman when her antipathies are flattered.

Five days after this Bianchon and Duriau, the famous ladies' doctor,
were engaged at Lousteau's; for he, ever since little La Baudraye's
reply, had been making a great display of his joy and importance over
the advent of the infant. Monsieur de Clagny and Madame Piedefer--sent
for in all haste were to be the godparents, for the cautious magistrate
feared lest Lousteau should commit some compromising blunder. Madame de
la Baudraye gave birth to a boy that might have filled a queen with envy