for him, lay in the unknown depths of an arid and rocky
soil; he was obliged, in order to reach it, to dig a sort of artesian
well. Gerfaut accepted this heroic labor; he worked day and night
for several years, his forehead, metaphorically, bathed in a painful
perspiration alleviated only by hopes far away. At last the untiring
worker's drill struck the underground spring over which so many noble
ones breathlessly bend, although their thirst is never quenched. At this
victorious stroke, glory burst forth, falling in luminous sparks, making
this new name--his name--flash with a brilliancy too dearly paid for not
to be lasting.

At the time of which we speak, Octave had conquered every obstacle
in the literary field. With a versatility of talent which sometimes
recalled Voltaire's "proteanism," he attacked in succession the most
difficult styles. Besides their poetic value, his dramas had this
positive merit, the highest in the theatre world they were money-makers;
so the managers greeted him with due respect, while collaborators
swarmed about him. The journals paid for his articles in their weight
in gold; reviews snatched every line of his yet unfinished novels; his
works were illustrated by Porret and Tony Johannot--the masters of
the day--and shone resplendent behind the glass cases in the Orleans
gallery. Gerfaut had at last made a place for himself among that
baker's dozen of writers who call themselves, and justly, too, the
field-marshals of French literature, of which Chateaubriand was then
commander-in-chief.

What was it that had brought such a person a hundred leagues from the
opera balcony, to put on a pretty woman's slipper? Was the fair lady one
of those caprices, so frequent and fleeting in an artist's thoughts, or
had she given birth to one of those sentiments that end by absorbing the
rest of one's life?

The young man seated opposite Gerfaut was, physically and morally, as
complete a contrast to him as one could possibly imagine. He was one
of the kind very much in request in fashionable society. There is not
a person who has not met one of these worthy fellows, destined to make
good officers, perfect merchants, and very satisfactory lawyers,
but who, unfortunately, have been seized with a mania for notoriety.
Ordinarily they think of it on account of somebody else's talent.
This one is brother to a poet, another son-in-law to a historian; they
conclude that they also have a right to be poet and histo