e?"

He replied unhesitatingly: "In this matter, madame, I should never
consider the merit, always disputable, of the candidates, but their age
and their state of health. I should not ask about their credentials, but
their disease. I should not seek to learn whether they have made a
metrical translation of Lope de Vega, but I should take care to obtain
information as to the state of their liver, their heart, their lungs,
and their spinal marrow. For me a good hypertrophy, a good aneurism, and
above all, a good beginning of locomotor ataxy, would be a hundred times
more valuable than forty volumes of disgressions on the idea of
patriotism as embodied in barbaric poetry."

An astonished silence followed this opinion, and Madame Walter asked
with a smile: "But why?"

He replied: "Because I never seek aught else than the pleasure that any
one can give the ladies. But, Madame, the Academy only has any real
interest for you when an Academician dies. The more of them die the
happier you must be. But in order that they may die quickly they must be
elected sick and old." As they still remained somewhat surprised, he
continued. "Besides, I am like you, and I like to read of the death of
an Academician. I at once ask myself: 'Who will replace him?' And I draw
up my list. It is a game, a very pretty little game that is played in
all Parisian salons at each decease of one of the Immortals, the game of
'Death and the Forty Fogies.'"

The ladies, still slightly disconcerted, began however, to smile, so
true were his remarks. He concluded, as he rose: "It is you who really
elect them, ladies, and you only elect them to see them die. Choose them
old, therefore, very old; as old as possible, and do not trouble
yourselves about anything else."

He then retired very gracefully. As soon as he was gone, one of the
ladies said: "He is very funny, that young fellow. Who is he?"

Madame Walter replied: "One of the staff of our paper, who does not do
much yet; but I feel sure that he will get on."

Duroy strode gayly down the Boulevard Malesherbes, content with his
exit, and murmuring: "A capital start."

He made it up with Rachel that evening.

The following week two things happened to him. He was appointed chief
reporter and invited to dinner at Madame Walter's. He saw at once a
connection between these things. The _Vie Francaise_ was before
everything a financial paper, the head of it being a financier, to whom
the press and the po