rites_ upon the scene.

"I have a volume of poetry as well, sir----" he began.

"Oh! you are a poet! Then I don't want your romance," and the old man
handed back the manuscript. "The rhyming fellows come to grief when
they try their hands at prose. In prose you can't use words that mean
nothing; you absolutely must say something."

"But Sir Walter Scott, sir, wrote poetry as well as----"

"That is true," said Doguereau, relenting. He guessed that the young
fellow before him was poor, and kept the manuscript. "Where do you
live? I will come and see you."

Lucien, all unsuspicious of the idea at the back of the old man's
head, gave his address; he did not see that he had to do with a
bookseller of the old school, a survival of the eighteenth century,
when booksellers tried to keep Voltaires and Montesquieus starving in
garrets under lock and key.

"The Latin Quarter. I am coming back that very way," said Doguereau,
when he had read the address.

"Good man!" thought Lucien, as he took his leave. "So I have met with
a friend to young authors, a man of taste who knows something. That is
the kind of man for me! It is just as I said to David--talent soon
makes its way in Paris."

Lucien went home again happy and light of heart; he dreamed of glory.
He gave not another thought to the ominous words which fell on his ear
as he stood by the counter in Vidal and Porchon's shop; he beheld
himself the richer by twelve hundred francs at least. Twelve hundred
francs! It meant a year in Paris, a whole year of preparation for the
work that he meant to do. What plans he built on that hope! What sweet
dreams, what visions of a life established on a basis of work!
Mentally he found new quarters, and settled himself in them; it would
not have taken much to set him making a purchase or two. He could only
stave off impatience by constant reading at Blosse's.

Two days later old Doguereau come to the lodgings of his budding Sir
Walter Scott. He was struck with the pains which Lucien had taken with
the style of this his first work, delighted with the strong contrasts
of character sanctioned by the epoch, and surprised at the spirited
imagination which a young writer always displays in the scheming of a
first plot--he had not been spoiled, thought old Daddy Doguereau. He
had made up his mind to give a thousand francs for _The Archer of
Charles IX._; he would buy the copyright out and out, and bind Lucien
by an engagement for several bo