and the grate stood a long table littered with
papers, and opposite the fireplace there was a cheap mahogany chest of
drawers. A second-hand carpet covered the floor--a necessary luxury,
for it saved firing. A common office armchair, cushioned with leather,
crimson once, but now hoary with wear, was drawn up to the table. Add
half-a-dozen rickety chairs, and you have a complete list of the
furniture. Lucien noticed an old-fashioned candle-sconce for a
card-table, with an adjustable screen attached, and wondered to see
four wax candles in the sockets. D'Arthez explained that he could not
endure the smell of tallow, a little trait denoting great delicacy of
sense perception, and the exquisite sensibility which accompanies it.

The reading lasted for seven hours. Daniel listened conscientiously,
forbearing to interrupt by word or comment--one of the rarest proofs
of good taste in a listener.

"Well?" queried Lucien, laying the manuscript on the chimney-piece.

"You have made a good start on the right way," d'Arthez answered
judicially, "but you must go over your work again. You must strike out
a different style for yourself if you do not mean to ape Sir Walter
Scott, for you have taken him for your model. You begin, for instance,
as he begins, with long conversations to introduce your characters,
and only when they have said their say does description and action
follow.

"This opposition, necessary in all work of a dramatic kind, comes
last. Just put the terms of the problem the other way round. Give
descriptions, to which our language lends itself so admirably, instead
of diffuse dialogue, magnificent in Scott's work, but colorless in
your own. Lead naturally up to your dialogue. Plunge straight into the
action. Treat your subject from different points of view, sometimes in
a side-light, sometimes retrospectively; vary your methods, in fact,
to diversify your work. You may be original while adapting the Scots
novelist's form of dramatic dialogue to French history. There is no
passion in Scott's novels; he ignores passion, or perhaps it was
interdicted by the hypocritical manners of his country. Woman for him
is duty incarnate. His heroines, with possibly one or two exceptions,
are all alike; he has drawn them all from the same model, as painters
say. They are, every one of them, descended from Clarissa Harlowe. And
returning continually, as he did, to the same idea of woman, how could
he do otherwise than produce a si