athan; you have written a great book, and the critic has only written
a review of it."

These thoughts set the blood tingling in his veins. Scarce a minute
passed but some young author, poverty-stricken and shy, came in, asked
to speak with Dauriat, looked round the crowded shop despairingly, and
went out saying, "I will come back again." Two or three politicians
were chatting over the convocation of the Chambers and public business
with a group of well-known public men. The weekly newspaper for which
Dauriat was in treaty was licensed to treat of matters political, and
the number of newspapers suffered to exist was growing smaller and
smaller, till a paper was a piece of property as much in demand as a
theatre. One of the largest shareholders in the _Constitutionnel_ was
standing in the midst of the knot of political celebrities. Lousteau
performed the part of cicerone to admiration; with every sentence he
uttered Dauriat rose higher in Lucien's opinion. Politics and
literature seemed to converge in Dauriat's shop. He had seen a great
poet prostituting his muse to journalism, humiliating Art, as woman
was humiliated and prostituted in those shameless galleries without,
and the provincial took a terrible lesson to heart. Money! That was
the key to every enigma. Lucien realized the fact that he was unknown
and alone, and that the fragile clue of an uncertain friendship was
his sole guide to success and fortune. He blamed the kind and loyal
little circle for painting the world for him in false colors, for
preventing him from plunging into the arena, pen in hand. "I should be
a Blondet at this moment!" he exclaimed within himself.

Only a little while ago they had sat looking out over Paris from the
Gardens of the Luxembourg, and Lousteau had uttered the cry of a
wounded eagle; then Lousteau had been a great man in Lucien's eyes,
and now he had shrunk to scarce visible proportions. The really
important man for him at this moment was the fashionable bookseller,
by whom all these men lived; and the poet, manuscript in hand, felt a
nervous tremor that was almost like fear. He noticed a group of busts
mounted on wooden pedestals, painted to resemble marble; Byron stood
there, and Goethe and M. de Canalis. Dauriat was hoping to publish a
volume by the last-named poet, who might see, on his entrance into the
shop, the estimation in which he was held by the trade. Unconsciously
Lucien's own self-esteem began to shrink, and his c