Commun.

In the dark-haired, keen-eyed, well-dressed, middle-aged man, with
commanding port and courtly address, he failed to recognise any
resemblance to the flaxen-wigged, long-coated, be-spectacled, shambling
sexagenarian whom he had known as Lebeau. Only now and then a tone of
voice struck him as familiar, but he could not recollect where he had
heard the voice it resembled. The thought of Lebeau did not occur
to him; if it had occurred it would only have struck him as a chance
coincidence. Rameau, like most egotists, was rather a dull observer of
men. His genius was not objective.

"I trust, Monsieur Rameau," said the Vicomte, as he and his guest were
seated at the breakfast-table, "that you are not dissatisfied with the
remuneration your eminent services in the journal have received."

"The proprietor, whoever he be, has behaved most liberally," answered
Rameau.

"I take that compliment to myself, cher confrere; for though the
expenses of starting the Sens Commun, and the caution money lodged, were
found by a friend of mine, that was as a loan, which I have long since
repaid, and the property in the journal is now exclusively mine. I have
to thank you not only for your own brilliant contributions, but
for those of the colleagues you secured. Monsieur Savarin's piquant
criticisms were most valuable to us at starting. I regret to have lost
his aid. But as he has set up a new journal of his own, even he has not
wit enough to spare for another. A propos of our contributors, I shall
ask you to present me to the fair author of The Artist's Daughter. I am
of too prosaic a nature to appreciate justly the merits of a roman; but
I have heard warm praise of this story from the young--they are the best
judges of that kind of literature; and I can at least understand the
worth of a contributor who trebled the sale of our journal. It is a
misfortune to us, indeed, that her work is completed, but I trust that
the sum sent to her through our publisher suffices to tempt her to
favour us with another roman in series."

"Mademoiselle Cicogna," said Rameau, with a somewhat sharper intonation
of his sharp voice, "has accepted for the republication of her roman in
a separate form terms which attest the worth of her genius, and has had
offers from other journals for a serial tale of even higher amount than
the sum so generously sent to her through your publisher."

"Has she accepted them, Monsieur Rameau? If so, tant pis pour vou