or. Thus is he a master-builder in fiction, selecting his artificers,
storing his materials, apportioning the quantity, keenly watching the
variations in public taste, and producing at last a mass and variety
that no one brain--however fertile and assiduous--could be capable of.
This," said he, drawing himself up proudly, "this is my walk. By the aid
of this discovery,--for it is mine, and mine only,--I am enabled to
draw tears in the 'Debats,' and convulse with laughter in the
'Constitutionnel;' and while writing of the torrid zone in one journal,
I have an Icelander as my hero in another. Men stare at the range of my
knowledge of life under aspects so various and discordant; and well may
they wonder, were I to draw upon my own unassisted faculties. But it is
men like you, Cregan, I want,--shrewd, sharp, ready-witted dogs; quick
to remark, and quicker to report. What say you, then, will you join my
corps in the fiction-foundry over which I preside?"

"Were I but capable--"

"You are eminently so. We need no literary ability, no craft of
authorship,--no more than the child who picks the wool in the factory
is called on to direct the loom that weaves it into cloth. Let me
finish the article; I 'II give it the gloss for sale! What say you? Five
thousand francs a year, free admission to every theatre in Paris, and a
dinner at 'La Trou aux Bois '--where you dined yesterday--every Sunday?"

"A bargain," cried I, in ecstasy.

"Concluded by both parties, who thus acknowledge their hand and seal,"
cried he, tossing off a glass of champagne; and then, rising from the
table, he prepared to take his leave. "I conclude," said he, "that you
'll not continue your residence here much longer. Seek out some quarter
less near to heaven, and more accessible to poor human nature."

I promised to follow the advice, and we separated: he to repair to his
haunts,--the cafes, the editorial snuggeries, and other gossip shops of
Paris; and I to seek out a more congenial abode, and one more befitting
the favorable turn which Fate had now imparted to my fortune.

The afternoon of that same day saw me installed in a pleasant little
apartment overlooking the garden of the Luxembourg, and where, from a
little terrace, I could inhale the odor of the orange blossoms, and see
the children at play amid the plashing of fountains and the waving
of the tall grass. It was, as I discovered, the quarter of the whole
artiste class,--poets, painters, actors,